A White-Hot Juggernaut At 200 Miles Per Hour!
Rather boring for the first 30-40 minutes. It's the dreariness of the Texas girls' characters and their existence that's dull. Their existence is just empty hedonism. Hot girls with "attitude", talking tough, drinking, smoking, doing drugs and just hanging out. It's all so banal. Then "Stuntman Mike" starts killing. Why? Who cares? As Tom Charity says, "For 50 minutes four girls sit and gab: in a car, in a bar, and in another bar. Then something really terrible happens and the movie starts over again: four girls in a car."
The girls in Tenessee are a bit more interesting, but again, as always with Tarantino, the characters talk virtually non-stop, and always with "attitude". Moveover, there's some awful exposition designed to let the audience know that two of the girls are stuntwomen, one of whom carries a pistol strapped to her leg, telegraphing a more equal combat scenario with Stuntman Mike. And that these two girls are into cars.
Have to say, the last half hour the action picks up, to some extent redeeming the previous hour's longeurs, including an excellent "ship's mast" action sequence, and getting very exciting when the girls turn the tables on Mike. But then the film ends. As with the psycho killer in No Country for Old Men (2007), we never find out anything about Mike's motivation.
Like Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), it seems to be like a practice exercise for a proper film. Great cinematography and editing, great soundtrack, hip dialogue, but for what?
When we enter Tenessee, the film changes to black-and-white, then some time later, back to colour, presumably trying to replicate Tarantino's experience of watching Grindhouse B movies in cheap movie theaters in the 1970s. Ditto the faux scratches and jumps on what is presumably pristine possibly digital modern film or video footage.
I read that the original film, shown as part of a double bill with Rodriguez's Planet Terror (2007), was only 60 minutes long, but here it's got an extra 27 minutes!
Watching streaming online from LoveFilm.com didn't help, as the movie kept stopping and having to re-buffer.
On the plus side, Russell does a fantastic John Wayne impression.
- Rating: Rental
- When seen: 14 Aug 2010
- Where seen: Home
- More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia
Posted using Blogo from my MacBook Pro
Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.
No comments:
Post a Comment