FROM DUSK TILL DAWN

From The Pit...

Vampires. Strippers. Violence. Tarantino. It’s either one of my depraved fantasies manifesting itself or a new Tarantino movie. I guess it’s a little bit of both and it’s called "From Dusk Till Dawn". It’s a new action/horror film written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Robert Rodriguez of "El Mariachi" and "Desperado" fame.
The screenplay was written by Tarantino based on a story by Robert Kurtzman. Tarantino turned down the director’s chair and pushed for Rodriguez to direct. The film stars not only Tarantino, but George Clooney, Harvey Keitel, and Juliette Lewis.

Tarantino and Clooney play two brothers, Seth and Richard Gecko. Richard (Tarantino) busts Seth out of court and they rob a bank in Texas, killing some Texas Rangers, cops, and civilians and taking a teller hostage. They then go on the run from the police, on their way to a rendezvous point in Mexico.

The film begins at a desert liquor store and goes rolling on form there. Seth and Richard shoot up the store and Richard gets shot in the hand, which brings a world of hell on everybody later in the film.

The Gecko brothers head to a hotel and hide out. They meet up with a former preacher and his family (Keitel and Lewis and a newcomer who plays the Chinese adopted son). They wind up kidnapping the family and forcing them to drive to the rendezvous point, a strip bar across the Mexican border called the Titty Twister. The true twist is that this bar is only open from dusk till dawn and the place is run by vampires, who feast on their customers each night. The Gecko brothers wind up fighting side by side against the vampires with the help of the preacher’s family and some bikers and truck drivers.

"Dusk Till Dawn" comes across as actually two films. The two halves of the film are nearly as different as dusk and dawn. The first half is very Tarantinoesque, the second half a horror shock fest. The first half is the stronger of the two, but the transition is interesting and effective. The two halves make it clearer that we have gone from day and reality into night and a world that mortals do not know.

There are many familiar themes in Tarantino’s work that also surface here. There is honor, redemption, self doubt, and personal individuality evident throughout the film. The kidnapped family is forced to work with their captors, and the captors begin to show compassion for their prisoners. The bikers and truckers work together in a battle royale that is human versus undead. The preacher father doubts his faith but slowly regains it and becomes a formidable weapon. Seth laments his relationship with his brother Richard and gets the chance to give Richard the peace and tranquillity he has sought but been unable to attain. The characters and the portrayals of said characters are strong throughout the film. Clooney does a great job as the no shit taking Seth. Seth is a professional thief with a sense of duty and honor. He does not kill unnecessarily and is a man of his word. Richard, the Tarantino character, is more psychotic and unstable than his brother. He is a known sex offender who kills with little provocation.

Keitel plays the struggling preacher who doubts his faith and his God after the death of his wife. It is interesting to see Keitel in a role where he is not constantly the bad ass, but eventually gets to kick some vampire ass. Lewis is good as the daughter and is a good actress, but as usual she is typecast. In films like "Cape Fear", "Kalifornia" and even to a certain extent in "Natural Born Killers" she played the same character: a slightly naive poor white trash girl, with a strong sexual undercurrent. Maybe someday she’ll realize that she is typecast.

Overall, "Dusk..." is a good film. It’s fun and entertaining. Go to have fun, not to see some cinematic masterpiece. It is violent and gory. It has very colorful language and interesting dialogue (Tarantino wrote it for God’s sake!). Tarantino and Rodriguez are both talented filmmakers, and sure they could have made a better more mainstream film. Instead they chose to make a film they wanted to make the way they wanted to make it. After being the critic’s darlings and under the magnifying glass for so long, to make such a non-traditional film is a great way to say "Kiss my ass if you don’t like it"!