Another Tarantino masterpiece?

(If you haven't seen Death Proof and don't want it spoiled for you then don't read this - though I will probably be saving you a precious two hours of your life if you do.)

I watched Death Proof last night, and I have to say that I wasn't disapointed by it. But then again, everyone I know who has seen it (excluding one person) told me it was rubbish. I would say out of the whole 2 hours of the movie only 30 mins of it was worth watching, provided you just skipped through the DVD to the good bits. Sitting through the whole thing for those half decent 30 mins is a total waste of time, which is exactly what I did last night.

The whole first hour of the film is pretty much just four women talking non-stop. I know that Taratino's movies have always been really dialogue heavy, and he is well known for writing some quality lines of dialogue. Everyone is familiar with the argument over tipping in Resevoir Dogs, or John Travolta and Samuel L Jackson's conversation about hamburgers and foot massages in Pulp Fiction. These were funny and entertaining little scenes that were totally dialogue driven and they worked. But in Death Proof it's not working at all. There is nothing particularly interesting that these characters are saying most of the time. The dialogue says very little about the actual characters, none of it alludes to the plot (because there is almost no plot at all, but we'll come to that), and it does not even feature those humourous little insights or unique perspectives that characters in previous Tarantino films would show us through their dialogue.

Tarantino has many little tricks in his arsenal as a writer/director, and the secret to most of his work when it comes to writing, is write the characters dialogue almost like they're stand-up comedians. Think of the scene in Resevoir Dogs where Mr Pink says "I don't tip." Then he goes on to give a list of reasons why, "why should we feel obligated to tip?" "You don't tip the person who serves you in McDonalds" "the government taxes their tips, I'm not gonna help the government" - These quotes are loosely paraphrased from the movie (obviously), but you could just as easily imagine them to be coming out of the mouth of a stand-up comedian. Just as John Travolta's and Samuel L Jackson's dialogue exchanges in Pulp Fiction are in someways similar to the head-to-head duologues perfomed by Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones in Alas Smith and Jones.

In previous movies each of his characters were interesting because each of them were expressing a unique point of view. In Death Proof, I can only think of one character that was actually interesting and unique and that was Kurt Russell's character "Stunt-man Mike", who was not in the film as much as he should have been. The film only started becoming even slightly entertaining when he appears, and he's the only person in the film who gets any good lines of dialogue.

I think in many ways Tarantino has been really ambitious with this movie. Rather than creating a film that relies on a plot to move it along the way, he's created a movie with very few plot points, which are as follows:

(spoilers warning if you haven't seen the film - although I think it would actually be very hard to spoil the experience of watching this film anymore than it does itself already)

1) Four girls meet up and talk, they go out get drunk and talk some more. 2) Stunt man Mike turns up, he talks. 3) Stunt man Mike drives his "Death Proof" stunt car into the girls when they drive home and kills them. 4) Four new girls, Stunt man Mike watches them as they talk, 5) the girls take a sports car for a test drive 6) Stunt man Mike tries to kill them, he gets shot 7) They chase him and kill him. THE END. (Okay, i've undersold the last part somewhat, the 2nd half of the film is better than the first, but even then, you still have to wait half an hour before it gets exciting.)

So I think what Tarantino was trying to do with this film is to try and make it work, for the most part, on dialogue and conversation alone, but he failed big time. Because in his previous movies, it never mattered how much the characters talked, the plotting was always good, and the characters always found themselves in interesting situations. It doubt that Pulp Fiction would still be a good film if it was just Travolta and Jackson talking about McDonalds hamburgers.

One thing that is always pressed on us in our course is that screenplays are about conflict and drama, without conflict you have no story. The conflict in Death Proof is practically non existent until Kurt Russel commits automobile homicide midway through the movie. I think it's funny that Tarantino tried to do something similar to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho where the main character is suddenly killed almost halfway through the film. Even now that sequence is still jarring and never fails to shock anyone who watches it for the first time. But in Death Proof, it's like Tarantino has mistaken his audience for someone who should give a shit about what happens next because not much has happened so far. As an audience you've sat through a whole hour with these very boring annoying characters so when you find out he only set them up for a whole hour to kill them off you're left feeling really pissed off. He could've condensed that whole first hour down into a 15 minute sequence.

In Psycho they make it work because we're fooled into thinking it is a film about a woman who stole some money and goes on the run. There was a dilema being played out, and while didn't know where it was going, we were interested to find out what happens. So when her death happens midway through the film it comes as a complete shock and we suddenly find out we're watching a film about a serial killer in Motel.

There's a lot more I could say about this film, and this whole piece could do with some tidying up but I got other stuff that needs doing. The only other thing I will say about the movie for now is that it has some really cool music. It was probably one of the best things about the movie. At least Tarantino can still do something right.