From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)Director: Robert Rodriguez
Starring: George Clooney, Quentin Tarantino, Harvey Keitel, Juliette Lewis, Ernest Liu, Salma Hayek, Cheech Marin, Fred Williamson, Tom Savini, Danny Trejo
It's Saturday morning and Kate has gone out for brunch, so as always I take the opportunity to watch a film that Kate would have no interest in seeing. I think I'm on the money with From Dusk Till Dawn.
Brothers Seth (Clooney) and Richard Gecko (Tarantino) are on the run from the law after a bloody bank robbery left numerous people, including policemen, dead. Needing to get into Mexico, they force minister Jacob Fuller (Keitel) and his kids (Lewis and Liu), to smuggle them across the border in their RV. They head to the rendezvous point, a biker bar called the Titty Twister, where they plan to spend the evening until their connections meet them at dawn. However, when it turns out that the Titty Twister is less of a biker bar and more of a vampire bar, surviving from dusk till dawn becomes a slightly more difficult prospect.
From Dusk Till Dawn is a really strange movie. It is strange because it is really two films. The first hour of the film is a crime/hostage movie with Clooney and Tarantino as characters who wouldn't have been out of place in Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction. The second half of the movie is a schlock horror vampire movie, much more akin to the Tarantino/Rodriguez collaboration Grindhouse. Both parts are quite good in isolation but together they just don't quite work. There is no logical connection and it is such a complete change of direction that you don't even feel like you are watching the same movie.
The Tarantino written screenplay has everything you would expect to find in a Tarantino screenplay: flashes of intense violence interspersed through lots witty dialogue. While Tarantino and Rodriguez are BFFs and seem to love working together, I don't know how well the collaboration worked in this instance. Tarantino has a real love for long, drawn out scenes of dialogue, whereas Rodriguez likes quick cutting action, which means the film has a funny, unsettled pace.
It's funny going back and watching George Clooney in films before he became 'George Clooney'. It is much like watching Jack Nicholson before he became 'Jack Nicholson', before the established persona shone became so prominent it pervaded everything he does. You see glimpses of the Clooney we know in From Dusk Till Dawn, but not the over the top charm machine that we see in the Ocean's films or in Up in the Air. This was Tarantino's first main acting gig. He appeared in Reservoir Dogs in a relatively minor role, but in this case he is under someone else's direction, there simply as an actor. I love Tarantino. I think he's a brilliant director and a great screenwriter, but the less time he spends in front of the camera the better.
Seth: A faithless preacher doesn't mean shit to us. But a man who's a servant of God can grab a cross and shove it in these monsters' asses. A servant of God can bless the tap water and turn it into a weapon... Now which are you, Jacob? A faithless preacher? Or a mean motherfucking servant of God?
He then picks up the cross he has fashioned from a shotgun and a bit of wood and goes out and kicks some vampire butt. What really makes that line for me though is Jacob's refusal to swear. Whether that was scripted or whether that was Keitel, it turns what could have been a really corny moment into quite a funny one.
From Dusk Till Dawn is a decent bit of entertainment which doesn't ask to be taken too seriously. That being said it is still very much a flawed film which really doesn't flow. If you are a Tarantino fan, a Rodriguez fan or a schlock horror fan there is value in seeing this movie. If you are in anyway squeamish, or a feminist for that matter, steer well clear.
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