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"Grindhouse" movie review |
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Written by Roger Moore, McClatchy-Tribune
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Friday, 06 April 2007 |
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___
GRINDHOUSE
4 stars (out of 5)
Cast: Kurt Russell, Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez, Josh Brolin, Rosario Dawson.
Directors: Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez.
Running time: 3 hours 11 hour minutes.
Industry rating: R for strong graphic bloody violence and gore, pervasive language, some sexuality, nudity and drug use.
——
It comes from such a pure place and finishes with such a rush that you have to cut "Grindhouse" all sorts of slack.
 This lurid, obscenely long homage to the cars, corpses and copulation Z-pictures of the 1970s captures the cheese, the verve and the movie lover's reverence for the medium that was evident in the original "grindhouse" movies, films catering to an unsophisticated audience in an era when mass movie-going was in danger of fading away.
Quentin Tarantino, who provides that final flourish to this double-feature with the climax to his road-wrecking ride, "Death Proof," goes for the jugular ... and the carotid and superior vena cava in his imitation of the lowbrow thrills that made him America's great grindhouse holdout. What he went for here is nothing less than a revival of what it means to be young and itching for that next cheap thrill that only an over-the-top action picture or horror film — seen in a theater with an audience — can provide.
Three hours and 11 minutes of movies, "prevues," vintage intersticials (the snack bar plugs and "our feature presentation" announcements) take you back to what it meant to sit through a "grind," a continuously showing presentation at a seedy downtown theater or drive-in.
"Grindhouse" pairs Robert Rodriguez's "Night of the Living Dead" zombie-movie knockoff, "Planet Terror," with Tarantino's ode to tough-talking chicks and Dodge Challengers — "Death Proof."
The Tarantino picture has a couple of terrific performances (Kurt Russell and Zoe Bell) and stunning car-stunts. But the Rodriguez movie — all gore, over-the-top violence and goofy one-liners — feels like the real grindhouse contender here.
"Planet Terror" is about a viral agent that turns first troops stationed in the Middle East, then the folks back home, into flesh-eating/flesh-eaten zombies. Rose McGowan is the pole-dancer who sees her stand-up comedy career wrecked when she loses a leg to these freaks. Freddy Rodriguez is El Wray, the avenging angel ex-boyfriend and tow-truck driver who wants to save her.
C-actors Jeff Fahey, Michael Biehn, Michael Parks and Josh Brolin chew through the scenery and each other in a bid to save themselves and others. Brolin, as an emergency room doc faced with a cheating wife (Marley Shelton) and a hospital filled with gaping virus wounds, opts for marital revenge, in between blunt bedside moments with patients.
"We gotta lose the arm, Joe."
McGowan, as "Cherry Darling," ends up replacing a leg with an automatic weapon, which puts her dance skills to good use. But being newly legless doesn't keep her character from adventures in the sack, another staple of the grindhouse.
There must've been a worldwide fake-blood and brain fluid shortage when Rodriguez filmed this thing. Messy.
Tarantino's film is a sadistic ode to muscle cars and "organic" movie stuntwork that shows just how much is missing every time Nic Cage ducks a digitally created Chrysler. This is real rending steel and burning rubber, as an aged, scarred stuntman (Kurt Russell, hilarious and iconic) takes out his frustrations on women by wrecking them in his vintage muscle car.
As in "Kill Bill," Tarantino matches lethal, grizzled male action stars with empowered tough grrrrrls (Rosario Dawson, Tracie Thoms and stunt-woman Zoe Bell) who sputter lots of Tarantino tough-talk — none of which is printable here.
Tarantino still can't act a lick. The music (Tarantino's soul and classic-rock picks) and cars are dated. The directors ogle and objectify the women, even the empowered ones, in the worst grindhouse tradition. Both features are far too long, with Tarantino's set-up for "Death Proof" — tarted-up women talking dirty and drinking in an Austin bar — right on the edge of interminable.
But the gag "prevues" are a hoot — with Rob Zombie's "Werewolf Women of the S.S." and Rodriguez's "Machete" (starring his battle-scarred muse, Danny Trejo) promising enough to become real grindhouse sequels.
You go to "Grindhouse" for the same reasons people went to the original grindhouses — primal, visceral action and primal, visceral sex (wait'll you see how that's handled). Nobody ever went for the acting or "the art."
You may not buy into Tarantino's ex-video store clerk thesis, scripted into the lines of a couple of characters, that movies from "Piranha" to "Vanishing Point," "Black Caesar" to "White Line Fever" were "classics," the "greatest American movies ever." But you'll certainly connect with their appeal. The critical favorites of the '70s may endure, but the high-energy junk playing at the drive-ins was anything but a grind. | Only registered users can write comments.
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