Swompdonkey

A Unified Theory of Tarantino



Pretty entertaining short, but is this anything new? As a big fan of the video store clerk from Tennessee who influenced a generation, I appreciate that somebody actually went to the trouble of outlining and organizing every observation, stray thought and half-formulated theory that me, my friends and a legion of other drunken guys of my generation came up with in our rec rooms over a few beers.

Tarantino movies have been dissected to death by every movie geek who came of age in the nineties, so none of this is new. Tarantino is the fountainhead for post-eighties cinema, and will probably be remembered as a towering figure in the history of filmaking. That being said, however, I'm beginning to see that the law of diminishing returns applies even in the case of the guy who wrote and directed possibly the coolest film ever committed to celluloid.

I just saw Grindhouse and, it pains me to write this, Deathproof got tedious.

Not the whole thing, of course. QT is still too dynamic and imaginative to ever descend to hack-like levels of mediocrity, but it still feels lazy.

We know the formula by now... Cast one iconic, slightly-past-his-best-before-date genre actor as a lead character: Keitel, Travolta, Carradine, and in this case, Snake Plissken himself, Kurt Russell; surround with compelling, quirky supporting cast, preferably including at least one or two hot women (this flick has several babes-du-jour); be really self-referrential by casting people who have appeared in other Tarantino/Rodriguez movies as similar yet-not identical characters (step forward Rose McGowa, star of Rodriguez Grindhouse entry Planet Terror ), and insert liberal amounts of violence, genre aesthetics, pop culture references, and signature Tarantino Dialogue. Why screw with the formula? It works .

Except, this time, it didn't.

Not for me. Not completely, anyway.

If you are going to make the kind of dialogue-heavy movies that QT makes, you better make sure the dialogue is up to snuff. If it ain't, the talky bits can be a bit much. For the first time, I found myself viewing a Tarantino movie and thinking "Get on with it, already!". I watched in dismay as Tarantino descended into self-parody, with absurd parabolic profanity-laced riffs that contributed nothing to the plot and went absolutely nowhere. It wasn't that the characters were badly-written, it was more that at times they seemed to be working to arrest the plot, rather than propel it forward. Of course, this being Tarantino, he did manage to redeem himself with virtuoso action set-pieces and some compelling character work from Kurt Russell, among others, so the movie is still very much worth seeing, especially the parts where Stuntman Mike is onscreen.

It becomes very clear when you watch the Grindhouse special features on DVD that Quentin is a man still very much enthused and besotted by film and the art of filmmaking. I trust that for his next work --supposedly the long-awaited Inglorious Bastards, Tarantino will recover his footing and deliver a war flick that will cement his place among the giants of contemporary cinema.