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Death Proof
A stunt driver stalks and kills women in auto accidents and he gets off by doing that.
This basically is automobile version of Ted Bundy. Serial Killers get off by committing crimes and that's why they do it again and again. A character background and his progression through this movie played by Kurt Russell is so realistic that you can totally believe someone like that could do that. This movie more than anything makes it much more clear on what inspires Quentin Tarantino movies.He is someone extremely inspired by the behind scenes in Hollywood. What makes someone a star. Which films bombed at box office. What kind of movies were made. He lifts characters from other movies and uses them in his story-lines. If a character like Don Corleone or Moses is used in different stories then audience will not connect. But if a fleshed out character from another movie is inserted into a different story then even though it feels jarring at first ,slowly the story starts to make sense. So there is this weird complexity yet familiarity to the characters in his movies.For example in Kill Bill, the lead character is an action hero. You have seen characters like that in tons of movies. So its a fully fleshed out "phoenix raising from the ashes" character. But when she is an ex assassin and her targets are ex assassins we are in a totally different circumstances. So that reduces him the burden of having to introduce and establish the character himself. Its been done for him. With all that said,its not easy what he is doing. Detractors might call it copying but even if he mishmash stuff from other movies its not easy to make them all look cohesive.
The movie takes place over the course of two accidents. The first one is a success but the second one is a failure. Any crime involves two parties. The one committing it and the one who its being committed to. They share a secret. In case of serial killers its unwillingly. During the act one person sees the evil side of another person. Most times they don't see the light of the day to say what happened and if they do they will be a changed person. This particular serial killer has a very elaborate scheme he uses to satisfy his urges. He develops a fool proof mechanism. He first stalks his victims because he wants to know who he is killing. Then, he uses his stunt car that's supposed to withstand violent crashes and a nod to the title , death proof to collide with victim's car and kill them. But he can cheat death and law using his car. Majority of the movie is the background of these women he stalks. Most of them represent majority of women between 15-30 working in Hollywood. They are either models or stunt women or so on. Most of the characters in the movie have obscure jobs in Hollywood. So all this kind of gives an LA feel to the movie.
To be honest all this kind of feels like the wet dream of a psycho. But in the end the movie kinda gives audience what they want by letting the women of the second car survive brushes with Kurt Russell and then go on to chase him and take revenge on him. The movie ends on a more goofy tone than the rest of the movie. One weird thing I noticed in most of Tarantino movies is that there is always that one southern racist looking old cop investigating a crime. If not integral to the story he wants that character to be in the movie to say some lines. Even if the crimes doesn't take place in south. The movie displays a predator and prey relationship between men and women. Women are tough but they are feminine tough and Kurt Russell as loathsome as he is , is a bad-ass in the movie.Tarantino plays with words and meanings and sentences a lot in his movies. Some are intended to be punch dialogues and some are just dialogues he loved to write. One such line which is kinda genius is, during his car introduction where he kills a woman before committing his buffet crime. He comes to an intersection where he is taking left and he intends to kill the woman in the car eventually but she doesn't know that yet. So he asks her where she want to go and she say the opposite direction. And the dialogue he uses goes along the lines of "That's too bad, we have 50-50 chance of going left or right , if you said left then it would have been a while before you start getting scared but since you said right I am afraid you have to start getting scared right now". That line is so great and catchy and its quite brilliant. You can't teach that in film school. Its a weird , crazy movie and its also a character study of killer and victims. He made this movie as a piece of entertainment and passing no judgement.
A stunt driver stalks and kills women in auto accidents and he gets off by doing that.
This basically is automobile version of Ted Bundy. Serial Killers get off by committing crimes and that's why they do it again and again. A character background and his progression through this movie played by Kurt Russell is so realistic that you can totally believe someone like that could do that. This movie more than anything makes it much more clear on what inspires Quentin Tarantino movies.He is someone extremely inspired by the behind scenes in Hollywood. What makes someone a star. Which films bombed at box office. What kind of movies were made. He lifts characters from other movies and uses them in his story-lines. If a character like Don Corleone or Moses is used in different stories then audience will not connect. But if a fleshed out character from another movie is inserted into a different story then even though it feels jarring at first ,slowly the story starts to make sense. So there is this weird complexity yet familiarity to the characters in his movies.For example in Kill Bill, the lead character is an action hero. You have seen characters like that in tons of movies. So its a fully fleshed out "phoenix raising from the ashes" character. But when she is an ex assassin and her targets are ex assassins we are in a totally different circumstances. So that reduces him the burden of having to introduce and establish the character himself. Its been done for him. With all that said,its not easy what he is doing. Detractors might call it copying but even if he mishmash stuff from other movies its not easy to make them all look cohesive.
The movie takes place over the course of two accidents. The first one is a success but the second one is a failure. Any crime involves two parties. The one committing it and the one who its being committed to. They share a secret. In case of serial killers its unwillingly. During the act one person sees the evil side of another person. Most times they don't see the light of the day to say what happened and if they do they will be a changed person. This particular serial killer has a very elaborate scheme he uses to satisfy his urges. He develops a fool proof mechanism. He first stalks his victims because he wants to know who he is killing. Then, he uses his stunt car that's supposed to withstand violent crashes and a nod to the title , death proof to collide with victim's car and kill them. But he can cheat death and law using his car. Majority of the movie is the background of these women he stalks. Most of them represent majority of women between 15-30 working in Hollywood. They are either models or stunt women or so on. Most of the characters in the movie have obscure jobs in Hollywood. So all this kind of gives an LA feel to the movie.
To be honest all this kind of feels like the wet dream of a psycho. But in the end the movie kinda gives audience what they want by letting the women of the second car survive brushes with Kurt Russell and then go on to chase him and take revenge on him. The movie ends on a more goofy tone than the rest of the movie. One weird thing I noticed in most of Tarantino movies is that there is always that one southern racist looking old cop investigating a crime. If not integral to the story he wants that character to be in the movie to say some lines. Even if the crimes doesn't take place in south. The movie displays a predator and prey relationship between men and women. Women are tough but they are feminine tough and Kurt Russell as loathsome as he is , is a bad-ass in the movie.Tarantino plays with words and meanings and sentences a lot in his movies. Some are intended to be punch dialogues and some are just dialogues he loved to write. One such line which is kinda genius is, during his car introduction where he kills a woman before committing his buffet crime. He comes to an intersection where he is taking left and he intends to kill the woman in the car eventually but she doesn't know that yet. So he asks her where she want to go and she say the opposite direction. And the dialogue he uses goes along the lines of "That's too bad, we have 50-50 chance of going left or right , if you said left then it would have been a while before you start getting scared but since you said right I am afraid you have to start getting scared right now". That line is so great and catchy and its quite brilliant. You can't teach that in film school. Its a weird , crazy movie and its also a character study of killer and victims. He made this movie as a piece of entertainment and passing no judgement.