Death Proof (2007)
★★★★ — Death Proof (2007)
Let me say it plainly: Death Proof is not Tarantino's worst film. Not even close. The people who write it off like that are, I'm sorry, simply wrong, and I think they've fundamentally misunderstood what they were watching.
Yes, it's corny. Yes, the dialogue meanders. Yes, the editing is choppy, the picture grain looks like it's been dragged through a car boot sale, and some scenes feel like they were spliced together by someone who'd had a few too many. That is entirely, deliberately, gloriously the point. Death Proof isn't a film that accidentally feels like a battered grindhouse relic from the 1970s. It's a film that chooses to, with enormous craft and affection, and there's a world of difference between the two.
The first half is a slow-burning, beer-soaked nightmare. It follows a group of women on a night out in Austin, stalked by Stuntman Mike, a grinning, leather-jacketed predator behind the wheel of a muscle car. Tarantino lets it breathe, lets it wallow, lets the sleaze seep in. The dialogue is corny, sure, but there's a creeping dread underneath all of it. The aesthetic, complete with the scratches, the missing reels, the washed-out colours, feels genuinely authentic to the era it's channelling. It doesn't feel like pastiche. It feels like the real thing, rescued from a skip.
And then the switch flips. The second half is practically a different film: sharper, brighter, higher energy, a full-throttle revenge movie powered entirely by female fury. A lot of people seem to miss or dismiss this gear change, and I genuinely don't understand that. The contrast is the whole point. It's a Frankenstein's monster stitched together from two entirely different genres, and the seam is part of the art.
Growing up on car films, I'm possibly not the most objective viewer here, but the chase sequences in the final act are extraordinary. Real cars, real speed, real danger. And then there's Zoe Bell, clinging to the bonnet of a Dodge Challenger with nothing but a pair of leather straps between her and the tarmac. It is one of the most viscerally thrilling sequences I've seen in an action film. Full stop. No CGI safety net, no digital trickery. Just a woman and a car and the very real possibility that something could go badly wrong. It's the kind of stunt work that makes you grip your armchair and grin like an idiot.
There's also what I'd argue is the sexiest scene in cinema history, which I'll leave for you to discover if you haven't already. You'll know it when you see it.
Compared to something like Inglourious Basterds (2009), which announced itself with the weight and ambition of a war epic, Death Proof is looser, smaller, deliberately scrappier. But there's a freedom in it. Tarantino wasn't trying to make something grand. He was playing, indulging, having the time of his life, and that energy comes through in every frame. He took his foot off the brake and let it run, and the result is something genuinely unlike anything else in his catalogue.
Four and a half stars. A masterpiece wearing a scratched-up VHS disguise, and proud of it.
Rating: ★★★★ | Year: 2007 | Watched: 2025-04-02
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Quentin Tarantino: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019) · Inglourious Basterds (2009) · Pulp Fiction (1994) · Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
More with Kurt Russell: The Fox and the Hound (1981) · Bone Tomahawk (2015) · Big Trouble in Little China (1986) · Tombstone (1993)
More from the 2000s: Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) · Daredevil (2003) · Apocalypto (2006)
More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)
More thriller: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Angst (1983) · The Long Walk (2025) · Punishment Park (1971)
