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Cherry (Rose McGowan) and Dr. Dakota Block (Marley Shelton) ride away from disaster in "Planet Terror," one of the movies in "Grindhouse."

Movie Reviews

By: David Coley

Posted: 4/9/07

In Theaters

'Grindhouse'

It's a concept that is not used near often enough: a double bill of shorter films tied together with a common theme. Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, guardians of all things obscure and cultish in cinema, have taken the gimmick and executed it with as much gusto as humanly possible.

What results is a good old-fashioned night at the movies - if you can stomach it.

"Grindhouse," running more than three hours, includes two films as well as fake movie trailers and other blurbs and ads to give you the feel of a trashy "Grindhouse" movie palace of the '70s. The feature as a whole conveys that feel quite well, and both parts manage to hold their own in innovation, homage, and excitement.

'Planet Terror'

The first segment, "Planet Terror" is helmed by "Sin City" director Robert Rodriguez, and is a zombie flick that exploits all the usual conventions of the genre. It follows an outbreak of a biological weapon that turns all the citizens of a small Texas town into the walking dead. The ever-dwindling group of survivors responds with a ridiculous amount of firepower, blood and guts flying everywhere relentlessly.

It definitely gets the pitch of a zombie film right. It does it better by turning the usual bland stock characters into colorful archetypes like El Wray (Freddy Rodriguez), a gunslinger with a notorious past, Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan), a go-go dancer who later sports a rifle as a leg, and Dakota Block (Marley Shelton), a doctor who has to fight the zombies and her angry husband with an arsenal of anesthetics.

It's cleverly shot, mimicking a poorly edited cult film with missing reels and repeated frames. It has all the style it can handle, and lots of energy.

For me personally, that much gore for that long just tends to get old.

After a while, especially because we know where the story is going, things begin to get weary. Despite that, it's still a fun film, albeit incredibly gruesome.

'Death Proof'

The second part, "Death Proof," is written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. It tells the story of Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell), a deranged man with an amazing car who targets and stalks young women and then commits vehicular homicide. It seems at first to be a throwback to exploitation films and other cult hits by filmmakers like Russ Meyer.

However, after about the first half of it, I got the feeling Tarantino was really paying homage to, well, Tarantino. There are many references to locales or lines from his other films, and he seems to overindulge in pop-culture references and long conversations about nothing pertaining to the story. He gets lost in meandering dialogue, and the middle of "Death Proof" is a bit lagging.

Despite this, and with a fantastic car chase taking up the latter quarter of the film, it manages to be a very enjoyable piece, especially as a counterpoint to the endless slaughter of "Planet Terror." Though the energy is not always even, it has a consistent vision and tone, and takes its place well in the body of his earlier work.

If either of the halves had been a longer standalone film, they would probably be considered horrible. Together, and with all of the trappings of a trashy movie house experience, they make for an exciting time.

If you are the least bit squeamish, however, you might want to sit this one out.

In Theaters

'The Lookout'

At first glance, the storyline for "The Lookout"might seem simple.

It involves a young man who, after a car accident, has problems with short-term memory and is forced to write everything down in a little notebook. He becomes involved with some thugs who recruit him for a bank robbery, and soon after he must somehow make everything right again.

This is the film that has been marketed to the public. Strange that the plot just described takes up barely half of the film.

Written and directed by Scott Frank, the movie stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Chris Pratt, a former high-school hockey star now suffering from the aforementioned mental problems due to a car crash that also killed two of his friends. He lives in Kansas City in a small apartment with his blind roommate Lewis (Jeff Daniels), and works nights as a janitor in a small bank just over the state line in Kansas.

He is soon selected by a gang led by Gary (Matthew Goode) because of his job in the bank. His role is to alert them when there is a lot of cash in the vault and then he can watch out for cops while they break in and steal it.

Through the gang he also becomes involved with Luvlee (Isla Fisher), a former "dancer" who falls for Chris while roping him into the gang on behalf of Gary.

While there are foul deeds afoot, the movie seems to be mainly concerned with Chris's attempts to fit into the world he was once part of. His affluent family still treats him like a child, especially because of his injury. He has trouble making friends or meeting girls. His janitor job provides him with no opportunities for advancement.

While this fish-out-of-water element might seem perfect fodder for a cheesy teen drama, Frank's smart screenplay helps raise it above the level of teen angst. Coupled with the excellent performances, the film becomes a great story of the rocky transition everyone must make into adulthood.

This is Frank's directorial debut; he previously wrote the scripts for such films as "Minority Report" and "Get Shorty." The direction, while not always as intelligent as the screenplay, is more than adequate. Sometimes the transition from the bank robbery scenes to the other, more personal, scenes is not so smooth, but he still manages to maintain a somewhat even tone throughout.

More than anything, I was surprised at the intelligence at work here. Gordon-Levitt follows up his great performance in last year's "Brick" with an equally thoughtful turn as Chris. It's odd to see an actor that young with as much wisdom as he seems to carry. Daniels and Goode also bring many facets to what could have been flat characters.

Overall, it's a movie that excels in surprise without indulging in it. I found it odd, in a movie about someone with short-term memory problems, how many things I forgot earlier in the movie that came back to surprise me in the end.

dcoley@unews.com