Let me go down the list. The Thing. Escape from New York. Big Trouble in Little China. Soldier. Does this sound like the filmography of a whiney little priss? Of course not! It's Kurt Russell, a Man of Exquisite Awesome. So why does he play a whiney little priss in Death Proof? Because Quentin Tarantino is a child murderer.

Here's how it works. Imagine you're God. As you're making the human race you understand the necessity of placing upon earth a number of men... Men of Exquisite Awesome, to be accurate. Without them, the human race would be quite lacking of any decent ass-kicking (which is necessary when assholes like Hitler and Al Capone reveal themselves). In fact, without Men of Exquisite Awesome, the human race would surely die. As such, you, in all your devine wisdom, declare that no Man of Exquisite Awesome can ever be a whiney little priss. But there's a problem. You also gave human beings free choice, which means that at one point it's possible a Man of Exquisite Awesome may decide to be a whiney little priss. So you devise an ace-in-the-hole. Any or all prissiness acted upon by a Man of Exquisite Awesome must be redeemed in the case most befitting the situation.

Enter Quentin Tarantino and his recent film Death Proof. He decides to cast Kurt Russell as a whiney little priss masquerading as a Man of Exquisite Awesome. Because you (and remember, you're pretending to be God right now) decreed that no Man of Exquisite Awesome can ever be a whiney little priss, you would have been proven wrong, and since you, Mr. (or Ms.) God, are infallible, to prove you wrong would unmake the universe, and Quenting Tarantino has just proven you wrong, so it's time to use your all-purpose contingency plan.

In the case of Death Proof, whininess must be erased. You can't kill a Man of Exquisite Awesome because you never know when someone might need a good ass-kicking. So to even out the whininess Kurt Russell spewed forth in Death Proof, you must eliminate an equal amount of whininess by killing roughly one thousand small children, preferably newborns because they are the most whiney. So ultimately, Quentin Tarantino caused the deaths of one thousand infants.

Furthermore, Kurt Russell's character is also an asshole. And trust me, assholes and Men of Exquisite Awesome are natural enemies. He must have really dug deep to play such a bastard.

I know what Death Proof is supposed to be doing. Planet Terror is aimed for the guys, and Death Proof has a lot of girls kicking ass (aptly called Women of Exquisite Awesome) so the flick balances out Grindhouse as a short aimed more at the female audience. But Tarantino could have (should have) picked any other actor to play Stuntman Mike. I suggest Al Pacino, seeing as how he thinks he's a Man of Exquisite when really he's just a douchebag.

	Whenever I see Al Pacino in any movie I think of this scene from Futurama: Calculon to director: "I don't do two takes. Amateurs like you do two takes. I do one take."

Other than that, Death Proof has a good car chase and few good kills. I'm not gonna pretend to know more about grindhouse films than I already do (which is zip). If that's the kind of review you're looking for I suggest Ain't It Cool News. But if you're gonna watch just one of the films in Grindhouse like the loud-mouthed poseurs did, then make sure it's Planet Terror and not this.

Click here to read my review of Planet Terror