Cannes 2007: Death Proof

Quentin Tarantino last night staged a multiple pile-up of influences on the Cannes Croisette. His mock-schlock thriller about a posse of hot babes taking revenge on a murderous, misogynist stunt driver gave us a full-on collision between Steven Spielberg's Duel and JG Ballard's Crash and, 90s man that he is, Tarantino somehow also sustained a brutal sideswipe from Sex and the City.

It's just the first half of his originally intended double-bill entitled Grindhouse (with a second movie, Planet Terror, by Robert Rodriguez, and trailers for imaginary films, including a segment by Britain's Edgar Wright); it spoofed 70s exploitation pictures, coming complete with scratches on the print, jumpy reel changes and sudden crackles.

The tricksy double feature was a box-office disaster in the US, so Tarantino and his producer Harvey Weinstein decided to release this expanded version of the first movie instead, unveiled here at Cannes for the first time. And expand it they have. The sexy auto-wrecking action is frequently suspended for some time, while the girls get down to some extended pop-culture yakking. This is often bafflingly unfunny and uninteresting, and it's never a good signwhen the director himself takes a small acting role. But the thrills and spills and the backtalk are wildly enjoyable when they finally arrive, and that first spectacular metal-scrunching, car-concertina-ing crash got gasps from the crowd.

Despite the 70s-stylings, the setting is the present and when characters take out their mobile phones and iPods, it's as if they've had exotic Christmas presents from a time traveller. Kurt Russell, pictured, is Stuntman Mike, a sinister loner , his leathery face bisected with a livid scar. Mike sips non-alcoholic beverages in bars - his preferred intoxicant being something else entirely. He strikes up a flirtatious friendship with a bevy of young women (Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Jordan Ladd, Vanessa Ferlito) with horrific results; later a second and entirely different posse (Rosario Dawson, Mary Elizabeth Wanstead and real-life stuntwoman Zoe Bell) get some payback on Stuntman Mike on behalf of all babekind.

It's not exactly a feminist tract, though Tarantino as screenwriter tries hard to get inside what he imagines to be the female mind, mainly by getting his characters to salivate at the mention of Italian Vogue. A shot of the highbrow magazine Film Comment on sale in a crummy convenience store caused Cannes festivalgoers to cackle.

Death Proof is a pretty minor and often silly picture; very oddly, those elaborate scratches and blips disappear towards the end of the film and, by the credits, the screen is clean; it's like an actor forgetting to do a foreign accent. Spoofing technical imperfections is cheeky considering the real-life ruptures and cock-ups that led to this lumpy movie.

But it would be obtuse to deny that there is a basic level of showmanship below which Tarantino never dips. The engine of his stunt car might splutter , but it often delivers a lethal roar of entertainment.