@ OINTS
This movie is deliberately designed to look like a low-grade B-flick from the 70's, and it's a guaranteed treat for that rare film fan nostalgic about that era in cinema.
Read the comments below from some reviewer, which I agree with. I think for what he intended to do, he succeeded, but as usual it will not be everyone's cup of tea.
The film starts off in an interesting way as Tarantino finally admits to his usurping of the celluloid past: Jungle Julie (Sydney Tamiia Poitier) walks into the frame and lies on the couch with an oversized photograph of Brigitte Bardot sitting in the same pose as Jungle Julie. Through this image, Tarantino is admitting off the bat that he lifts from other movies (something he should have done a long time ago). The irony comes in when he moves forward in making a film that really isn't overboard with Tarantinoesque dialogue and pop cultural explosions.
Sure, characters discuss Vanishing Point, but pop dialogue doesn't become the center of the film. In other Tarantino films, his characters and the trail of violence they follow are caricatures of the genres Tarantino loves so much. His cartoon-like version of Westerns, Kung Fu flicks, and Gangster films may turn people off as cheap, but it his extrapolation of these genres that matter. In his article "La Fiction Du Pulp: Tarantino's Trail of Bread Crumbs Leads to the French New Wave," Mick Sleeper discusses the similarities of the French New Wave auteurs and Quentin Tarantino's work: "Throughout Reservoir Dogs and especially Pulp Fiction, Tarantino experimented with genre conventions just as Godard and Truffaut had in their earliest films. Unexpected plot twists, unusual dialogue, cinematic in-jokes, and unconventional characters galore became Tarantino trademarks.
It is in Death Proof that Tarantino absolutely makes a film that shows his commentary on the films that inspired him; therefore, he is no longer ripping them off—I guess the hate mail worked. Tarantino is making a version that comments and bends the genres. In Death Proof, the slasher film merges with the racing film by making the women strong and turning the formidable knife into a muscle car. In the end, the nefarious killer of the picture shows his true colors by being a complete coward with no strength to show; this figuratively displays the death proof car as a weapon, which has been a portentous weapon that should have given away the true cowardice in the slasher's archetypes.
But this slasher has finally been forced into his comeuppance by fortuitously seeking women who represent the Russ Meyer films of the 60s—bad a** chicks that are not frazzled by violence and ready to rip shit up when necessary. With that said, the women in this film are tuff, and Zoë Bell's stunt work is incredible. There are moments during the speedy car chase that are not manipulated through editing but presented through tracking shots (not to say there were no cuts, but the longer tracking shots did make the scene extremely intense).
