Tarantino Has Done It Again; Rodriguez, Not So Much

Rating: 8/10 (16 April 2007)

What "Grindhouse" proves more than anything is how much better a director Quentin Tarantino is than Robert Rodriguez. It's unfortunate for Rodriguez that his film and Tarantino's are being presented in a format that allows the audience to compare them side by side; the comparison only highlights Rodriguez's flaws and Tarantino's talent.
"Planet Terror," Rodriguez's segment, is a tribute to the trashy zombie flicks of yesteryear, but it's a completely disposable movie. I know Rodriguez would probably take that as a compliment, since the grindhouse films to which he and Tarantino are paying homage are remembered for being the movie equivalent of junk food. But Tarantino creates a film that could easily stand alone outside of the double feature gimmick concept, while Rodriguez uses his opportunity at genre parody to make nothing but a frenetic gross-out film. I had fun with a lot of "Planet Terror." I especially liked Rose McGowan, as go-go girl (don't call her a stripper) Cherry Darling, who gets her leg gnawed off by crazed zombies and has it replaced with a machine gun that she uses to mow down her enemies while performing gymnastics. It's hooks like these that keep "Planet Terror" afloat. Rodriguez uses today's advanced technologies to include all of the outrageous images and stunts that makers of trash cinema would maybe have included themselves if they could have. But much of "Planet Terror" just made me feel sort of bad and depressed. The sight of mass human carnage in these post-9/11 days, when footage of suicide bombings assaults us on a daily basis, carries unpleasant connotations, and it's awfully difficult to lose yourself in the "fun" of seeing bodies ripped and blown apart with all of the indifference of a director who gets off on the site of human bloodshed. Therefore, I felt a slight sense of relief when "Planet Terror" ended.
But then Tarantino's "Death Proof" came roaring on to the screen, and memories of Rodriguez's segment were immediately wiped away. In "Death Proof," Kurt Russell plays stuntman Mike, who uses his grizzled charm to lure girls (like Rose McGowan, who pops up again in this segment, albeit in a very different role) into his bitchin' retro car and then kills them. Or he follows groups of girls riding in their own cars and plows into them at 200 miles per hour, as he does in the film's most disturbing and graphic scene. But after doing away with one such group, he sets his sights on another (the immensely charismatic trio of Rosario Dawson, Tracie Thoms and real-life stuntwoman Zoe Bell, who plays herself) -- and instantly recognizes his mistake. Half way through "Death Proof," Tarantino switches gears, and instead of following a "girls in danger" template, he makes the girls the dangerous ones. It's as if every female ever victimized in a grade-Z horror flick is resurrected in this group of fierce females, and work through them to get their revenge. The film is unpredictable, fresh, rousing and immensely exciting. It sent me out on a high.
Tarantino is incapable of making a thoughtless movie, and I'm beginning to think he's incapable of making a bad movie. Where Rodriguez is content to appeal to the most basic urgings of the adolescent males he clearly assumed would be his audience for this, Tarantino is interested in doing something more. "Death Proof" is not simply imitative of grindhouse cinema. Tarantino has always excelled at mimicking the genres he loves while making something completely unique out of them, and he does the same here. "Death Proof" isn't only an homage to the loved films of Tarantino's past; it's also an elegy. Stuntman Mike is a relic of an age when filmmakers created special effects in real time and space, without the help of CGI, and indeed no CGI was used in the astonishing extended action sequence that comprises the last third of Tarantino's film. He recognizes grindhouse films as the trash that they were, but it's clear that they also represent to him a certain kind of freedom that doesn't exist for filmmakers anymore. Makers of grindhouse movies knew that their films were going to be discounted by the mainstream movie establishment anyway, so they could revel in a kind of artistic freedom and make the movies they wanted to make without thought as to box office or awards potential. It's no wonder that this particular genre appeals to an auteur like Tarantino.
And of course, linking these two films are the batch of fake trailers for other sleazy cinematic offerings. "Thanksgiving" seems to be the one that audiences remember the most, but I actually thought "Don't" was the wittiest, and the one that felt most authentic.
"Planet Terror": B-
"Death Proof": A