Quentin Tarantino is probably the man who opened the doors of cinema for me. When I was 14 or so my brother rented Pulp Fiction, and while I was too young to get the dysentery joke, I knew this a special film, something distinct and different, something I came to understand as the best type of postmodern cinema, referential, irreverent, and very witty. Since then, Tarantino has received mixed reviews, first for the rather placid thriller Jackie Brown, and then for his frenetic kung-fu homage Kill Bill. But for the first time in a while, Tarantino is facing box-office backlash, with this year’s split-side release of Death Proof along with Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror to form Grindhouse. Its 3 hours of violence and sexy ladies failed to impress when released in the US, making a paltry 25 million in total. Panicking, the film’s distributors split the films into individual, extended releases, the first being Tarantino’s half. But alone, does it stand?

The plot is hardly the point, since this film is a homage to low-budget 70s shockers, but nevertheless: a mysterious ex-stuntman in an intimidating suped-up stunt car traverses the highways picking out attractive young women, in an aim to lure them into his car and bounce them around until they die, or else slam his reinforced car into her’s. Of course, his schemes are spoiled by a bunch of feisty females.

Tarantino has faced criticism before, with many saying he is self-indulgent, his films acting as veritable wet dreams. But that was what Tarantino was always about- even Pulp Fiction is really an accumulation of various art-house films, obscure thrillers, etc. Tarantino’s virtue was his admission that he doesn’t know life, he just knows movies. But with this film Tarantino is resurrecting a type of film that really didn’t need to make a comeback. It makes me worry that the kind of torture-porn we’re seeing these days will resurface in about 20 years. Sure, Tarantino is having a bit of fun with the genre, but it’s the kind of film that needs about five minutes to represent, and then it just gets boring. But Tarantino milks it, turning the film into a 2-hour epic. And ultimately, it consists of about two car chases, one or two amusing jokes, and then a whole lot of dull conversations, the kind of conversations that those who blatantly wanted to mimic Tarantino would write.

Watching the film, I attempted to balance my disgust by thinking of Tarantino’s past triumphs. Maybe there was something I was missing. Sure, Tarantino is returning to his female empowerment that he sculpted so well in Kill Bill. Stuntman Mike is an anachronism, the young men mocking his old style, the film’s symbol of modernity (2 sassy stuntwomen), being his fatal nemesis. But whereas Kill Bill painted the image of an impassioned woman trying to rescue her child after evading murder, the characters of Death Proof are incredibly shallow. They talk about making out with boys, the genius of Vanishing Point, or silly antics on a film set (there’s nothing as unoriginal and boring as a film about people involved in films). They argue, and they laugh, but we really don’t get a sense of character. And in the end, they amount to a sexy body heaped on a pile of attitude, and little more.

On a side note, I spent the film being confounded at the fact that so much money was put into this movie (which I believe was filmed in 35mm) and then treated to look like a badly-maintained grind house flick. Who not shoot the film using the kind of second-hand second-rate equipment those filmmakers had to use? Or why not make a modern grind house film using consumer DV equipment? It’s like going to a Michelin Star restaurant to get a Big Mac.

As much as I respect Tarantino, this film is proof that he has finally disappeared up himself, so convinced of his own abilities that he extended a 20-minute idea in a two-hour feature, and it really doesn’t work. It’s overlong, badly paced, feature bad dialogue and little to no characterisation. But Tarantino is a man with a vision, and it would be silly to suggest he needs someone to restrain him. All one can hope for is that Tarantino’s next film, be it Inglorious Bastards or something else, gets him back on track.

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