Death Proof

Flicks, Andrew Hedley

Forget about the ‘Grindhouse’ experience for a moment, and imagine that Tarantino’s latest adventure exists independently. It doesn’t, and it shows, but just imagine anyway. We get a movie that feels hip but unimportant; entertaining but long-winded. It’s really a great night out in every way except one: the dialogue.

Little White Lies

A waste of time. A waste of celluloid. A waste of talent.

Total Film

QT's B-movie homage to cars and girls deploys its cheap thrills with laid-back craft and class.

The Times

The appalling dialogue... is so garbled, spotty and tedious that it fails to sell interest in a single character.

Salon

Much of this material is terrific in purely cinematic terms...

The Guardian

Death Proof is wildly offensive, gleefully offensive, malice-aforethought offensive, with maximum gore and violence wrapped in an eerie glow of unreality.

Financial Times

Nought out of 10 for artistic expression but four for amiable delinquency.

Sydney Morning Herald

Death Proof is superbly made.

New Zealand Herald

Death Proof is certainly entertaining, but it's also baffling and will have you wondering what the point of it all is.

Lumiere Reader

Similarly at odds with the exploitation double-bill, Death Proof defiantly – even unconsciously – stands alone, and however self-aggrandising, contains some smashing moments, builds to a considerable fck yeah, and works even better on its own terms...

Empire Magazine

Seriously entertaining American filmmaking and definitely not the half-serious pastiche it could easily have been. No seatbelt, no airbag, no nuthin’ — just Tarantino driving wildly under the influence...

Dominion Post

Tarantino treats his film set like a toy box, and his movies are still a guilty pleasure to watch. Nice one...

Christchurch Press

Sure, it's full of injokes, self-indulgent references (why would two modern girls love Vanishing Point?) and self-referential indulgences (Red Apple cigarettes and Earl McGraw turn up) and Tarantino-isms abound (listen for familiar ringtones, and irrelevant, meandering conversations), but it's a hell of a lot of fun and strangely empowering.

While attempting to replicate the gloriously bad movies of his youth, Tarantino couldn't help himself. He went and made a good film...

BBC

The shift between stories is as sudden as the ending - no doubt in tribute to Tarantino's beloved cheap "grindhouse" features, but that doesn't make it any easier to swallow. There's plenty of fun to be had with Death Proof, but its imitation of a defunct, low-budget style of movie-making is perhaps too accurate when it comes to the genre's flaws...