For the first 42 minutes "Death Proof" is pretty much a girl's night out story with Quentin Tarantino supplying his typical outstanding dialogue. I love Tarantino's dialogue and he always manages to find the right people to deliver it. In this case he turns to Vanessa Ferlito, Jordan Ladd and Sydney Tamiia Poitier to open his story. These three are meeting some friends out at a redneck bar in Texas and then it's off to the cabin for a girl's weekend. There are hints danger is looming, and it is, but it isn't until the 42-minute mark that this film takes a turn from a dialogue driven talky to a balls out action thriller - and then - enter our second story.
At 56 minutes the film goes black-and-white and then at about minute 63 it goes into crystal clear color, this is when we are introduced to our second story involving four more girls. This time it is a more recognizable group including Rosario Dawson, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Tracie Thoms and Zoe Bell. I am sure most of you know Rosario already, many of you may remember Mary Elizabeth from Final Destination 3 and Live Free or Die Hard, and while they both add to Quentin's story the second half of "Death Proof" is owned by Tracie Thoms and Zoe Bell. Thoms takes to Tarantino's dialogue as if she had been speaking it her whole life. Just seeing Thoms, who I had always considered a sweet looking little actress, say, "Look, I don't know what futuristic utopia you live in, but the world I live in, a bitch need a gun," and at the recommendation of carrying pepper spray instead she has this fantastic reply, "Mutha fucka try to rape me I don't want to give him a skin rash, I wanna shut that mutha fucka down." If you aren't laughing at the matter-of-fact way she says this, shutting down any chance for disagreement, then you really need to check yourself for a pulse. Her dialogue combined with Bell's stunts and what may be the best car chase scenes I have ever seen make up the second and third acts of this film and take it from grindhouse to a legitimate film.
Speaking of this being "grindhouse", I am not quite sure it qualifies. The first half certainly has the grainy style of a grindhouse flick along with the jumpy editing, but the second half is way too perfect to really consider it "grindy". Also, this film is too damn good to be a real grindhouse, but we couldn't really expect QT to make a bad movie to in an effort to respect a certain genre. I suppose when you look at it on a whole and realize everything exists simply to place two different groups of girls in harm's way you could call that a little "grindy" but for the most part this is just classic Tarantino. The one thing I am not sure of is if people that are not Quentin fans will enjoy this flick because it is very Tarantino. Fans of QT are going to eat this up due to the dialogue, the story and the actors he has cast to tell it all, but I am afraid others may get bored since it is a very talky flick. I consider the mixture of action and QT's dialogue to be a perfect marriage of words and speed, but hey, that's just me.
As for the DVD, it is great to get the extra footage making "Death Proof" almost two hours now, but the rest of the features are really quite boring and hardly necessitate a two-disc edition considering the first disc doesn't have a commentary or anything else besides a look at some international trailers and posters. Disc two has a couple of features on the girls, a feature on Kurt Russell and another on the guys of the movie, a look at QT's editor Sally Menke, a featurette on the stunts and stuntmen, some B-roll footage featuring the uncut version of "Baby, It's You" by Mary Elizabeth Winstead (a scene I believe is new to this uncut edition if memory serves me correctly) and finally a trailer for Double Dare (a documentary on stuntwoman-turned-actress Zoe Bell). Of the features mentioned it was interesting to hear the story of how Rosario and Tracie got cast and it was certainly cool to watch the stunt featurette and hear the production audio from the shoot during the first car crash scene, but the rest is pretty much all fluff.
Even though this is a 2-Disc release and "Planet Terror" is getting the same treatment in October I have to assume there is going to be an impressive collector's set that will be made available down the line. Neither this release nor the "Planet Terror" release has the faux trailers and if you remember back to Sin City the Deluxe Edition held all the goodies. Granted the "Planet Terror" release does have a commentary from Rodriguez, but just looking at the Sin City Deluxe Edition I see a commentary with Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino and I fully expect the same thing for both of these movies in the future. Since Grindhouse tanked at the box-office the Weinstein Co. needs to make their money back somehow and I am guessing cool as hell DVD releases will be the way they go.
As to whether or not you should buy this DVD, I certainly recommend you do no matter when a deluxe edition will be released, and this is a movie you don't want to wait to own, especially if you are a Tarantino fan or a fan of good movies in general.