Movie Review: Grindhouse
Grindhouse (2007)–**
“Is the movie that I am watching as interesting as a documentary of the same actors having lunch together?”
That’s how Gene Siskel described his gauge for critiquing films. When it comes to something like Grindhouse, where the actors aren’t much more than Hitchcockian prop pieces and five separate directors take on some part of the film, there’s another question we should ask: Was this film made to be shown outside of any of the directors’ living rooms?
The answer is a no, but only because the idea of Grindhouse, two trashy features separated by faux trailers for trashy features, probably sounded better when Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino discussed the idea it over a few pitchers. By actually putting what had to be a drunken idea to lens, they create exactly they intended create: a bad movie.
Rodriguez fairs better than Tarantino mainly because Grindhouse was always his type of film. From Sin City to From Dusk ‘Til Dawn, Rodriguez has not seen his work ascend to the level of film art. When he makes a sci-fi zombie gore-fest like his Grindhouse segment Planet Terror (the first of the films in this three-hour double feature), he makes it on his terms. Those terms are often sophomoric, but the more films he makes, the more refined Rodriguez becomes.
Fortunately, it’s refinement without compromise. That’s why Rodriguez can make a zombie film with T&A and still heighten a moment of drama with a fake shuttering or warping of celluloid. It’s as if he’s struck the balance of his masturbatory fantasies and filmmaking consciousness that Tarantino has long had. It also makes the news of the Rodriguez directed faux trailer Machete being turned into a full-length feature exciting. A Mexican day laborer turned hitman who kills the bad guys and gets the girls. That’s Grindhouse.
Machete is just one of four trailers that appear in Grindhouse. Other trailers directed by the likes of Shaun of the Dead’s Edgar Wright, Hostel’s Eli Roth and Rob Zombie all achieve a greatness that, with the exception of Wright, is rarely seen in their feature films. These directors are perfect for Grindhouse and any one of their three minute visions could have been expanded to complement Planet Terror. The unfortunate fact is that Tarantino made the second feature and not any of those guys.
Tarantino’s segment titled Death Proof is a miserable experience to sit through, one that doesn’t nearly stand-up to the films he has made in the past, nor to the concept of Grindhouse. Whereas Rodriguez made a bad movie because he is good at making bad movies, Tarantino went out of his way to make a film that was so loopy and disengaged from narrative conventions that his artistry for the first time is hard to find.
This seemingly bad movie about a stuntman serial killer who messes with the wrong group of girls has very little momentum. Much of Tarantino’s dialogue, specifically a weak redux of the Reservoir Dogs diner table chat, never comes close to achieving the transcendental greatness of his previous work. As the second film in what is an exhausting double feature, Death Proof, more than any other part of Grindhouse, is at the mercy to the concept.
As I take the time to bash Grindhouse, I’m reserving the right to reconsider both individual features if and when they are released as extended, stand-alone films. Grindhouse doesn’t work, but I’m not quite sure the same can be said about Planet Terror or Death Proof. Thankfully, in the world of DVD, we’ll likely get the chance to see the individual films in our own living rooms. Tarantino, Rodriguez and company have to appreciate that because that’s where they are all enjoying Grindhouse.
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