What does Quentin Tarantino truly love? Bare feet, sure, but let’s not get into that. His other big obsession is 1970s grindhouse cinema, that vast reservoir of zero-budget C-movies that all seem to promise violence, gore or some sort of corrupting wickedness. The best of these slapdash quickies thrum with a disreputable energy. Most are charmless and unwatchable. The trailers – lurid, voiceover-heavy and mercifully short – are usually the best part.
In 2007, Tarantino and his buddy Robert Rodriguez channelled the ghost of drive-ins past for Grindhouse, an uncouth double-bill of throwback movies. This was a lovingly-crafted three-hour exultation of trash that somehow cost $70million to make. It absolutely belly-flopped at the US box office. Perhaps it was all just too much for the squares to take.
But Grindhouse seemed to single-handedly revive the grubby aesthetic in an unprecedented way. Suddenly a new generation of film-makers, advertising executives and game designers all wanted to invoke the exploitation movie era, and no wonder. Not only was it retro, which was cool, it also offered a short-cut to justifiable sensationalism. Even better, the distinguishing cheapo style was, essentially, a licence to half-ass things.
By the time Wet sprang into view in 2009 – and lithe, leather-jacketed assassin Rubi Malone is ideally always in motion – the whole grindhouse thing had ground all of us down. Perhaps that explains the lukewarm reception to this supremely cocky shoot-em-up, a more flamboyant heir to Max Payne’s teeth-gritted gunplay tumbles. Framed as a suitably gonzo revenge movie, it is the story of a dodgy job gone wrong, and the hundreds of henchmen who apparently have to die as a result.