Death Proof, My Other Favourite Tarantino Movie

SPOILERS FOR DEATH PROOF

If you were to ask me what my favourite Tarantino movie is, you’d get one of two answers. To be honest they’re actually the only two Tarantino movies that I really clicked with, those being Pulp Fiction and Death Proof. These two movies are complete opposites in my mind.

Before we talk about Death Proof, we need to talk about Pulp Fiction.

At 16, the proud Tarantino hater that I was, watched Pulp Fiction out of spite. I expected to hate it and rag on it but, to my surprise, I ended up giving it a 5 star rating. It was just the perfect encapsulation of Tarantino’s style and with it, I understood his other movies better. Still, a year later, it is still a favourite of mine, a real Friday night movie. The kind of movie that you’d watch after a long day with a burger and fries, the kind of thing I’d watch with my parents to kick off the weekend. A true staple of 90s cinema and even as overrated as this movie is, it belongs up there with The Matrix, Goodfellas, The Big Lebowski and Fight Club. It’s just that good! They even referenced it in the opening to Chainsaw Man. Now that is a sign of true cinema.

I think what I love most about Pulp Fiction, more than all the action, more than all style, I love the dialogue! Tarantino is known for being the dude with a lot of violence in his movies but that’s never what I look for in his movies. I’m not a storm chaser, I like the calm before the storm, that little bit before the scene crescendos into violence. I’m not saying that his movies don’t have good action or anything like that but rather that the action and violence and overall tone of the movie is elevated by the dialogue, in Pulp Fiction especially. In fact the more conversation-heavy parts of Pulp Fiction are some of my favourite scenes, Vince and Jules talking about Burgers, the date with Mia Wallace, the diner scene. Those are the scenes that etched themselves into my brain.

On the complete opposite side of the spectrum, we have Death Proof.

Death Proof most definitely is not a movie I’d watch after a long day with a burger and fries, it is not the movie that I’d watch to kick off the weekend and it most certainly is not a movie that I’d watch with my parents. However, it is completely different to what I’ve come to expect from Tarantino and I’m here for it! It’s not style over substance, yes, it is stylish but it also has a message at its core, it’s trying to say something. There’s something to chew on while you watch the credits roll. What is Death Proof even about anyway?

Death Proof is about two sets of girls and this guy named Stuntman Mike who follows them with his pitch-black, death-proof car. Stuntman is in his name, so naturally, it is his game and his car is specifically designed to protect him when he does these stunts, therefore, it is death-proof.

However, not much attention is given to Mike, it mainly follows his victims. We get to know his victims really well. First, we are introduced to a group of girls and essentially sit in on their entire car ride and we get to see their time spent at this bar. We meet Stuntman Mike at this bar as well and also get a terrible performance from Quentin Tarantino himself. At the very least, he didn’t use his unwanted cameo to say the n-word this time. The scene at the bar is not about Quentin Tarantino, however, instead it places our focus on Stuntman Mike.

Though the movie as a whole focuses on the girls, we learn a lot about Mike from this scene.

We learn that Mike clearly experiences some discomfort with women. We see this when Mike flirts with a girl at the bar and tries to appear cool and suave but through the cracks we see his discomfort.

Then a separation between Mike and these girls is made very clear to us. These girls are, very clearly, younger than him and this already creates a divide which only becomes more evident once he talks about all the shows he’s done stunts for, only to find out that they have no idea what he’s talking about. There is gap in both their ages and their life experience. To boil it down, there is a separation between Mike and women. This is a more abstract representation of that separation and there are physical representations of this which we’ll speak about in due time.

We also witness, through the cracks of his nice-guy act, his true nature. This is clear when he speaks to Butterfly and asks her for a lap dance. He asks her if she’s scared of him and she says that she is, when asked why, she says it’s the car. I’m sure most dudes are aware that just by being a guy, girls will be afraid of you or at least uncomfortable because, let’s face it, girls have it rough. I was surprised at how aware this movie was of that discomfort though. Tarantino is not the most aware of these things. Unless they are literally a nazi or literally racist, I don’t usually see his characters as evil, they’re all a little evil but in Death Proof, it was different. In Mike’s conversation with Butterfly, we get a glimpse of how vile he is. This is only fully revealed in his car, when the mask slips off.

The main symbol in this movie is his car. It’s a symbol of Mike’s masculinity. His primary weapon and the space in which he feels most comfortable. Whenever he exerts any physical harm on a woman, he uses his car. He uses his masculinity to exert power over the women that he stalks and meets. The car is also that physical representation of the separation between Mike and the women. I can’t believe I’m about to say this but it’s obvious that feet are symbol of intimacy in Tarantino movies and of course this movie has a lot of feet in it but the thing is, there’s a scene in this movie where Mike touches a woman’s foot which is meant to be this intimate scene but they are separated by a metal car door.

There’s also the scene in which he drives a woman home from the bar and while she is sitting in the passenger seat next to him, they are separated by a transparent barrier.

That scene where he drives a woman home from the bar is genuinely chilling and I know that I sound like a Nerdstalgic thumbnail but I mean it. Most of the time, violence in a Tarantino movie can be fun but not in Death Proof. In this scene, he uses the innerworkings of his car to kill his passenger which if you compare the violence to some of his other movies, it’s pretty tame. Nobody’s getting their ear sliced off, nobody’s getting scalped, nobody’s getting their head blown off. What really disturbs me about this scene though is when this half-dead, half-bruised woman begging for her life, banging on the screen, crying, screaming, laughing, doing anything she can to get him to spare her but it was all in vain.

That sounds bleak and it is but I can assure you, this movie is actually pretty cathartic by the end. There is a constant build-up, a constant suspense through out the movie. The long car rides, the conversation heavy-scenes, our anger towards Mike slowly rising along with our anticipation, it’s all build-up. Build-up towards one cathartic ending.

This may be a hot take but from the Tarantino movies that I’ve seen, I don’t really think that he sticks the landing with the endings. Pulp Fiction had a perfect ending, a climactic anti-climax. I wouldn’t call Death Proof’s ending anti-climactic but it was perfect. Every punch, every kick, every hit connecting with Mike’s face just felt so visceral, so palpable, so well-deserved. It isn’t some grand set-piece but it for all the suspense and build-up, it was worth it, every blow was worth the wait! It was a triumph!

This was Death Proof, my other favourite Tarantino movie. Even though it is a pretentious pick, It’s his lowest rated one and is usually at the bottom of every ranking of his movies but I can’t help but love it. It clicked with me in the same way that his most acclaimed movie did, I connected with it and my eyes were glued to the screen. I feel that I respect Tarantino more as a director after watching it. In my super-secret spreadsheet, I gave it a perfect score of 5 stars.

I want to thank you all for reading this. I’d like to speak about movies more in future and I have a few exciting pieces planned but for next week, I’m going to be writing something slightly different from what I usually do and it will be more collaborative so, stay tuned! See ya next week!