There are two ways to approach Death Proof, and therefore two ways to judge it. Firstly, as Quentin Tarantino's love-letter to the sleaze cinema of his youth, it's doubtlessly accurate, acute and admirable (in so-far as sleaze-homage is admirable). Secondly, as a film and therefore social artefact, Death Proof is immoral, exploitative and arguably destructive.

There are also two halves to Death Proof, partitioned by a wall of black and white cool in the film's mid-section. The first half is a clean-cut fanfare to the films of the day, with all the in-jokes, references and mise en scene you would expect from the master of credible plagiarism. This first half, essentially a 70's hang with the supremely watch-able Vanessa Ferlito and the gang, throbs with the passion of a director in his element and plays well as both tribute and entertainment. Kurt Russell's role as Stuntman Mike is tempered well with the trash-talking girls and loud-mouthed boys that make-up the first hour of film and the decidedly grindhouse styling brings much weight to an experience otherwise entirely about the objectification and sexualisation of women. And this is where the plot thickens; though Death Proof may accurately re-present us with a by-gone era of film; is it an era worth its weight in… anything? So much of the runtime is spent delving into the realm of women as fetish and man as unmotivated killer that the viewer would be forgiven for doubting not only their role in this film as voyeur but also the film's worth as entertainment.

The first alarm bell rings when Mike's first victim meets her end. A brutal passenger ride ends with a hyperventilating, thorax crushed innocent at death's door and the tone doesn't change much from there on. If it weren't for the director's notoriety as a recycler of cool Death Proof may come off less as oddball glorifier of the perverted and more as run-of-the-mill horror, but it's the wealth of stylistic input and superficial determination to attract and invest the male gaze that separates the film from the less-knowing pack. The violence is gratuitous and the tone so changeable that entertainment is easily confused with sadism; there is little more shocking in cinema than Tarantino's feverish salivation over his female leads suddenly transposed into mutilation.

The second half of Death Proof is a sincere slice of the directors own vision. Consider it his modern reincarnation of the genre and you are a way to understanding the overtly “talky” riffs on Elmore Leonard-speak his fans are used to. What differs here is his reliance on a group of bland characters to carry the flow of the narrative to its climax. Bloated and stale, the near-forty minute segment of girl-talk is almost too much to take before a showdown in the country dissipates any tension.

With Jackie Brown, Tarantino proved that trashy influences can be harnessed to great effect in a product with a solid mind of its own. With Death Proof, Tarantino proves that trashy influences can also equal a mindlessly trashy film. How you justify it in your entertainment diet, however, is something you'll have to prove to yourself.

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