Death Proof 2007 Full Movie

[Alarico Boyett]

Death Proof is a 2007 American action slasher film[2] written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. It stars Kurt Russell as a stuntman who murders young women with modified cars he purports to be "death-proof". Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Ferlito, Jordan Ladd, Rose McGowan, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Tracie Thoms, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Zo Bell co-star as the women he targets.

The film was originally released theatrically as part of Grindhouse, a double feature that combined Death Proof with Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror. After Grindhouse underperformed at the domestic box office, Death Proof was released as a standalone feature in other countries and on home media. It received mostly positive reviews for its stunt sequences and tribute to exploitation cinema, although its pacing was criticized.

Three friends, Arlene, Shanna and radio DJ "Jungle" Julia Lucai, drive down Congress Avenue in Austin, Texas, on their way to celebrate Julia's birthday. In a bar, Julia reveals that she made a radio announcement offering a free lap dance from Arlene in return for addressing her as "Butterfly", buying her a drink, and reciting a segment of the poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening". Aging Hollywood stunt double "Stuntman" Mike trails the women to a bar and claims the lap dance. Arlene is suspicious, having seen Mike's car earlier that day, but he convinces her to give him the lap dance.

The women prepare to depart with Lanna, another friend. Pam, Julia's old classmate, accepts Mike's offer of a ride home. Mike takes Pam to his Hollywood stunt car rigged with a roll cage and tells her the car is "death proof", but only for the driver. He speeds and slams on the brakes, smashing Pam's skull on the dashboard, killing her. He catches up with the women's car and drives into it head-on at high speed, killing them. Mike survives with no serious injury. Sheriff McGraw believes Mike killed the women intentionally, but because Mike was sober while the women were intoxicated, he cannot be charged.

Fourteen months later, three young women, makeup artist Abernathy Ross, stunt driver Kim Mathis and actress Lee Montgomery, are driving through Lebanon, Tennessee on break from a film shoot. They stop at a convenience store, where Mike watches them from his car. The women pick up their friend, stuntwoman Zo Bell, from the airport while Mike photographs them unaware. Zo tells them she wants to test-drive a 1970 Dodge Challenger, the same type of car from the 1971 film Vanishing Point and has found one for sale nearby. The owner lets them test-drive it unsupervised after Abernathy tells him Lee is a porn star and she is left behind as collateral.

Zo tells Abernathy and Kim that she wants to play a game they call "Ship's Mast", whereby she rides the hood holding belts fastened to the car while Kim drives at speed. Kim is hesitant but agrees. The three enjoy the stunt, unaware that Mike is watching them. He rear-ends them in his car, causing Zo to lose her grip on both belts and is left holding on to the hood. After several more collisions, he T-bones them, throwing Zo from the hood. Kim shoots Mike's left shoulder and he flees in his car. Abernathy and Kim cry over the apparent loss of their friend, until Zo emerges uninjured. The three agree to catch up to Mike and kill him.

The women catch up to Mike as he is treating his wound and ram him, then Zo gets out and beats him with a pipe. They continue chasing him as he pleads for mercy, finally flipping his car off the road. They drag him from the wreckage, take turns punching him and then finish him with two kicks to the face.

Tarantino attempted to cast John Travolta, Denzel Washington, Willem Dafoe, John Malkovich, Mickey Rourke, Ron Perlman, Bruce Willis, Kal Penn,[5] and Sylvester Stallone[6] in Death Proof, but none were able to work due to prior commitments. In an interview, Tarantino revealed that he cast Kurt Russell as the killer stunt driver because "for people of my generation, he's a true hero ... but now, there's a whole audience out there that doesn't know what Kurt Russell can do. When I open the newspaper and see an ad that says 'Kurt Russell in Dreamer,' or 'Kurt Russell in Miracle,' I'm not disparaging these movies, but I'm thinking: When is Kurt Russell going to be a badass again?"[7] Eli Roth, Planet Terror leading actress Rose McGowan, and Tarantino himself appear in the film. Roth flew in from Europe, where he was filming Hostel: Part II, to film his scenes, which took one day.

After being stunned by stuntwoman Zo Bell, who worked as Uma Thurman's stunt double in Tarantino's earlier film Kill Bill, Tarantino wrote her the leading female role. This was her first on-screen acting, which Bell initially thought was going to be a cameo role. The character Zo was based on the stuntwoman herself and includes small stories based around her real life experiences, some with Tarantino. When her name was featured on the film posters opposite Kurt Russell, Rosario Dawson and Rose McGowan, she realized how big the role was.

Death Proof uses various unconventional techniques to make the film appear more like those that were shown in grindhouse theaters in the 1970s. Throughout the feature, the film was intentionally damaged to make it look like many of the exploitation films of the 1970s which were generally shipped around from theater to theater and usually ended up in bad shape. A notable example of one of the film's deliberate jump-cuts is seen at the beginning, when the title Quentin Tarantino's Thunderbolt is shown for a split second before abruptly being replaced by an insert with the title Death Proof, appearing in white lettering on a black background.[8] (Exploitation films were commonly retitled, especially if they received bad press on initial release.)

The soundtrack for Death Proof consists entirely of non-original music, including excerpts from the scores of other films. It was released on April 3, 2007, alongside the Planet Terror soundtrack. Both albums featured dialogue excerpts from the film.

Death Proof was released in the US and Canada alongside Planet Terror as part of a double feature under the title Grindhouse. Both films were released separately in extended versions internationally, approximately two months apart.[12] The additional material includes scenes that were replaced in the American theatrical release version with a "missing reel" title card, such as the lap dance scene. A total of 27 minutes were added for this version. One of the first screenings of Death Proof was made at the Edinburgh International Film Festival on August 20, 2007, with star Zo Bell attending the screenings.[13]

Death Proof received generally moderate reviews. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 64% based on 45 reviews, with an average rating of 5.30/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Death Proof may feel somewhat minor in the context of Tarantino's larger filmography, but on its own merits, it packs just enough of a wallop to deliver sufficiently high-octane grindhouse goods."[17] The French magazine Les Cahiers du cinma ranked Death Proof second best film of the year 2007.[18]

Damon Wise of Empire magazine gave the film four out of five stars and a mostly positive review, describing the film as "Tarantino driving wildly under the influence" and "seriously entertaining".[19] The BBC's Anna Smith said that while there was "fun to be had" with the film, "its imitation of a defunct, low-budget style of movie-making is perhaps too accurate when it comes to the genre's flaws",[20] and gave the film three out of five stars. Roger Ebert gave Grindhouse 2.5 out of 4 stars, writing that while Death Proof was the more enjoyable half of the bill, it was still marred by overlong scenes of expository dialogue.[21]

Death Proof was released on DVD in the US on September 18, 2007, in a two-disc special edition featuring the extended version of the film, documentaries on the casting of the film, the various muscle cars and Tarantino's relationship with editor Sally Menke, trailers, and an international poster gallery.[25] On December 16, 2008, a BD release of identical content followed.

A Japanese DVD release has the films Grindhouse, Death Proof and Planet Terror, with extras and fake trailers, in a six-DVD box set (English with optional Japanese subtitles). Death Proof was also released as a German HD DVD, believed to be the last film published in the now-defunct format.[26]

Every time I see Quentin Tarantino's bifurcated 2007 flick Death Proof I want to write about Death Proof, and every time I write about Death Proof I tell myself I'm going to write about something besides Rosario Dawson's performance in Death Proof... and every time I spectacularly fail at this mission. This "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" post you're now reading is further proof, dead proof, of just that. It's just there is that moment, that single moment seen above, where Tarantino's camera zooms in on Dawson's face as her worry melts into absolute exaltation, and it is by my humble estimate one of the greatest, most electric close-ups in cinematic history. Just that!

Why, after dozens of screenings in the past thirteen years do I still spend the second half of Death Proof bubbling over with an almost animalistic glee, a frenzy, my own one-time worry melting into its own sort of triumphant passenger-seat exaltation?

At the exact midpoint of the movie, right after the first group of unlucky ladies have had their not-so meet-cute with Stuntman Mike's front bumper, we cut to the local hospital where a a sheriff-type and his deputy-son (nevermind that these are carry-over characters from Planet Terror, Robert Rodriguez' conjoined Grindhouse feature) are assessing the accident's gruesome aftermath. Sheriff Earl (Michael Parks) speculates -- which is to say he spells out Tarantino's raison dtre for the yokels in the back row -- that Stuntman Mike is a serial killer who "used a car not a hatchet" to murder "them pretty little gals," probably as "a sex thing." Basically what Earl tells us is, hey, in case you didn't notice you're watching a Slasher Movie.

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