Death Proof (2007)
★★★★ — Death Proof (2007)
Death Proof arrived in cinemas in April 2007 as one half of Grindhouse, a double-bill project conceived alongside Robert Rodriguez, designed to recreate the experience of watching low-budget exploitation films in a run-down American movie house circa the 1970s. The full Grindhouse presentation, fake trailers included, ran to around three hours and performed modestly at the American box office. For international markets, the two films were separated and released individually, which is how most audiences outside the United States came to know Death Proof as a standalone picture. That release history matters because it shapes how you watch it: a film built to sit inside a larger, slightly ramshackle programme is a different proposition when it has to stand entirely on its own two feet.
Quentin Tarantino has always worn his influences on his sleeve, and Death Proof is perhaps the most transparent expression of that tendency in his filmography. Where films like Jackie Brown and Reservoir Dogs absorbed their genre references into something with broader dramatic ambitions, Death Proof commits wholesale to the aesthetic of a specific, fairly niche corner of 1970s American cinema: the car chase and slasher exploitation picture. The film was produced through Dimension Films and Troublemaker Studios, the latter being Rodriguez's own outfit, which gives the whole enterprise a certain independent, passion-project energy. Tarantino wrote and directed, as ever, and the script leans hard into the kind of unhurried, digressive dialogue scenes that are either his greatest strength or his most indulgent habit, depending on your patience and your mood.
The cast is anchored by Kurt Russell, playing Stuntman Mike, a scarred, leering figure who stalks a group of women across two separate story strands using his heavily reinforced muscle car as a weapon. Russell, who has previous form in larger-than-life genre roles (fans of his work might also enjoy the site's look at Big Trouble in Little China and Tombstone), brings a particular kind of polished but unremarkable menace to the role, a quality the film actively exploits. Opposite him, the second group of women is led in practical terms by Zoë Bell, the New Zealand stuntwoman who had previously served as Uma Thurman's stunt double and here appears as a fictionalised version of herself. Bell is not a trained actress in the conventional sense, which is either a charming bit of meta-casting or a slight awkward note, again depending on your tolerance. Rosario Dawson and Vanessa Ferlito round out a cast that also includes Sydney Tamiia Poitier as radio DJ Jungle Julia, and the ensemble collectively carries the film's long conversational stretches with varying but generally convincing degrees of naturalism.
People say this is Tarantino’s worst film. Those people are wrong. It's SUPPOSED to be this corny. This is a masterpiece. A movie of two halves, stitched together like a Frankenstein’s monster of grindhouse horror and adrenaline-fueled revenge flick. It has the sexiest scene in cinema history, and one of the best action stunts. The first half is a sleazy, slow-burning, beer-soaked nightmare straight out of a scratched-up VHS tape, complete with deliberately bad editing, corny dialogue, and a grainy aesthetic that feels authentic to the era it’s paying tribute to. Then the switch flips and the second half is a high-def, full-throttle, girl power revenge movie, and it rules. People often overlook this switch. As someone raised on car flicks, this is a love letter to the art of the chase. The real stunts, the real danger and Zoe Bell hanging onto the hood of that Challenger is one of the best sequences in action cinema. Tarantino took his foot off the brake for this one, and I’m glad he did.
I'll be honest, I came back to this one expecting it to feel like a minor footnote in the Tarantino catalogue, and it genuinely surprised me. The more I think about it, the more the structural gamble pays off. If you've read my thoughts on The Hateful Eight, you'll know I have a lot of time for Tarantino when he's willing to let a film breathe before it detonates, and Death Proof does exactly that, just in a far grungier register. It's not a film for everyone, and I doubt it's trying to be. But if you've got any love for the era it's channelling, or even just for the spectacle of a proper car chase with real steel and real risk, it deserves a lot more credit than it typically gets. Sometimes the films people write off too quickly are the ones worth watching twice.
Rating: ★★★★ | Year: 2007 | Watched: 2025-04-02
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Death Proof (2007) on YouTube
Where to watch
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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)
