Death Proof and Vanishing Point
So the other night I watched Death Proof for the second time. I stand by my original take on it. It's too long and a little short on action for the movie it's trying to be. While I think we can all agree it's QT's worst film, that doesn't make it bad, though. I can listen to the guy's dialouge all day long, and this is certainly full of it. The action sequences were actually very well done. I really liked Kurt Russel in this, particularly when he cried like a little girl after being shot in the arm. Good character. It's not something I'd really recommend, certainly in favor of his other movies, but it's got its enjoyable traits.
Interestingly, he based it on slasher movies. Rather than a guy with a machete it was a guy with a car. Great idea. Unfortunately, he didn't really go all in with it. There's no suspense. Stuntman Mike necessarily has to kill multiple people at once, rather than picking them off one by one. It's not Friday the Thirteenth if Jason just explodes a cabin with 12 nubile girls inside. I think what he was after could be done, though. This is one I'd love for him to get a do-over on.
Naturally, this led me to Vanishing Point (same car) which I'd been wanting to watch for a while. I'm really not sure what to make out of it, and in this case that's an endearing quality. Confusing but boring movies suck. This was entertaining but mysterious. We never knew what Kowalski's motivation was. We never knew how Super Soul could communicate with him (magic negro aside). There was no explanation for why he ended the pursuit the way he did. Yet none of those things really hurt him or the movie. You still gained a lot of insight into who he was, both by flashbacks and the gradual police intel reports. You still liked him as he was an honorable guy (aside from his distinguished earlier careers, he stopped after every accident to see if the other driver was alright). You still enjoyed it as a driving movie with a killer soundtrack and great scenery.
And what really makes it work is that even though you don't really know what it was all about, the door is open to plenty of interpretations, mostly resting on the philosophical. It's been posited that it was strictly a paean to existentialism. Kowalski simply was. He did his thing until he couldn't anymore. Another interpretation, and one that I find more intriguing, is problematic because of a scene that was cut for the US release (or maybe was added for the UK release). The hitchhiker he picks up is presumably death incarnate. I made sure to switch over to Youtube to watch this scene where it belonged, and I'm glad I did. That leads to the interpretation that he's been flirting with, and then running from death his entire life until it (she) finally caught up with him. I like that.
The plan was to watch Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry next, but in typing this up it occurs to me that The Hitcher is the obvious choice. It kind of bridges the two movies with an interesting psychopath and a lot of high speed desert driving.