Movie Review : From Dusk Till Dawn (1996
My knowledge of the Quentin Tarantino legacy is full of holes. I don't hate him. I never openly disliked one of his movies either. Something about his kid-in-a-toy-store approach to directing prevents any surges of overbearing enthusiasm towards his upcoming releases on my end, though. Pulp Fiction was great, sure. My DVD collection will testify to that. I dug the quirkiness of Jackie Brown. Both Kill Bill and Inglorious Basterd weren't bad, but they didn't do much for me. I know he didn't direct From Dusk Till Dawn, but he was heavily involved in the making of the film. He wrote the screenplay and co-starred in it (doing a great job, I must say). There is no real reason why I waited a decade and a half to watch From Dusk Till Dawn. After viewing it, I can now say there was no valid reason either. It's a good little pulp movie.
The Gecko brothers are on the run after a bank job gone wrong. They have left behind them a trail of blood that's half the U.S long and they keep killing. They're gunning for shelter in Mexico, where they'll have to shed 30% of their loot in exchange for peace of mind. In order to go the last mile to the border, they kidnap the Fuller family and squat their R.V. The father Jacob (the always wonderful Harvey Keitel) is a minister having a crisis of faith and struggles with the idea of being kidnapped after seeing his wife die a terrible and unfair death. But once they cross the border and arrive to Mexico, the situation takes a whole new turn and they are confronted to a whole new ordeal that will force the brothers and the Fuller family to join forces and fight as one. They are stranded, in a shitty dive, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by vampires.
It's been a while since I enjoyed Quentin Tarantino's writing so much. Maybe it's because From Dusk Till Dawn was written in the mid-nineties, where he did write his most memorable stuff, but this is goooood. The Gecko brothers aren't anti-heroes, they're bad guys. Richie Gecko, Tarantino's character, is struggling with mental health issues and he's portraying it brilliantly. He looks 500% unstable. Kudos also to Rodriguez and Tarantino for casting the always amazing Juliette Lewis as the good girl, the minister daughter. She's so used to be typecasted as the bad girl, she portrays the struggle of her blooming into womanhood against her religious values beautifully. Harvey Keitel is wonderful as always. While Clooney is solid as always, everybody is so good around him, his game looks weak and predictable at times, believe it or not. Narratively speaking, it's an almost flawless movie. Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino are a good team.
I can't ignore Satanico Pandemonium. I just can't. I think nobody did.
Here's the thing.
From Dusk Till Dawn is a grindhouse horror movie. It's kind of Rodriguez and Tarantino's thing*. It's a vampire movie too. I gotta say it, gore is not my thing. I don't mind it, I can definitively stomach it, it's just not something that stimulates my pleasure gland. Mindless carnage and festering tripe is hardly the gaze-into-the-abyss stuff that I love. Once the carnage starts, substance is dwindling and vampire massacre comes into full effect. I gotta say the vampires were well done. They truly were demons of the night and weren't sexy, leather-clad night dwellers or craving for timeless love like their contemporary counterparts. It's just that once the movie gets there, that's all there is. It's funny at times, but if bulks skewerings and beheadings leave you cold, it's a bit long.
I don't feel that I have liked From Dusk Till Dawn for the right reasons, but I liked it. Sharp writing and acting will do that. Structurally, it's also interesting because there are false climaxes that openly challenge movies that just go through the motions **. They will make your movie stand-out, no matter what the actual plot is. I could have done with a lot less latex monsters. In fact, I think if the supernatural would have only been suggested, it wouldn't have hurt the movie too much (OK, maybe it would've). But that's me. I dislike excess of single things and worship variables such as accuracy and understatement. If grindhouse and gore are your things, this is probably the best movie ever. I liked it and admired its narrative boldness with a polite distance, but I could very well understand people who freaked out about how cool it was.
FOUR STARS
* I haven't watched that one, by the way.
** For example, most movies of its ilk would have ended in a spectacular firefight at the border, with the death of the Gecko brothers. THAT would have been the predictable thing to do.
