I'm usually very ambivalent about Quentin Tarantino's movies. To use an old but relevant term, he puts style above substance. If you strip away the hip references to pop-culture and Asian cinema, you will realize that the themes of his movies only get touched upon very superficially. Yet his cool dialog and ingenious use of continuity in PULP FICTION (1994) has been a great inspiration to movie-makers for over a decade, therefore it could be argued that he's the Godard of his generation. I personally acknowledge the significance of his movies, although I request more real substance.
Quentin Tarantino's episode GRAVE DANGER: PART 1 (of two episodes) doesn't disappoint, whether you are a fan of Tarantino or CSI. I haven't seen many CSI episodes, so my reference frame isn't exactly huge, but I understand its basic concept. In my opinion Tarantino manages to harmonically combine the usual CSI thriller elements with the classic Tarantino trademarks. It could in fact be argued that fusing completely different movie styles and genres is Tarantino's great strength. That's possibly the main reason this project fit him so well. The result is a fresh, pumped-up, stylistic CSI. It's not as ground-breaking as PULP FICTION, but who expected it to be? TV-series are always dumbed down to fit the mainstream, and that goes for the GRAVE DANGER episodes too. Yet if all TV-series were like this, the general TV standard would indeed be very high. Then again, Tarantino was gives two full episodes to operate on, which meant that he had the necessary time for character developing scenes with non-plot-driven dialog that the normal CSI directors don't have.
Regardless of you're a CSI or Quentin Tarantino fan I highly recommend watching the GRAVE DANGER episodes. It's CSI Ultimate Edition and an interesting curiosity for QT fans. 8/10
