Having post-modernized everything from the heist movie to samurai cinema with universally fawning results, Quentin Tarantino was perhaps due a backlash. As one half of the Grindhouse double bill that also featured Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, 2007’s Death Proof bombed at the box office: It placed fourth behind a wretched sequel no one asked for (Are We Done Yet?) with a dismal opening weekend gross of $11.6 million.
