"Fight now, cry later."
From Dusk till Dawn (1996) is a violent crime/horror exploitation film directed by Robert Rodriguez. Much like True Romance (1993) this is one of only a couple of films written by Quentin Tarantino, that he didn't actually direct. He wrote the screenplay very early on and in a very short time span (in two weeks!) with the intent to sell. People would call him up and tell him they loved it, but no one actually wanted to make it. When everyone passed on it Quentin's good friend Robert Rodriguez expressed interest and they decided to go forward with it.
The story follows the bank-robbing Gecko brothers on a killing spree as they try to escape the police and cross the border to Mexico, they hijack a family's RV and everything is going well but things take a drastic turn for the worse once they get into Mexico.
(Special spoiler warning for this one: If you want the full experience of this film don't read on any further. This film has a drastic twist halfway through and I'm going to talk about it bellow.)
The script for From Dusk till Dawn is really clever. The film starts out as a pretty typical 'bank-robbers-on-the-run' heist-type film that halfway through completely shifts tone and becomes a very gruesome horror film much like the exploitation horror films of the later 70s through the 80s. The shift is very weird but also clever and unique. What I like about it is how completely the script shifts and almost before the viewer knows it, they're in a completely different movie.
I like how well thought-out the characters are: a preacher whose recently lost his faith, a professional bankrobber who's stuck with his sex-offender brother. This is less so for the characters introduced in the second half (the Vietnam vet and Sex Machine the very typical biker bar patron), but with the genre shift it almost actually fits. The characters introduced later almost follow different rules because of the change of tone in the film.
And the film is packed with (now-classic) Tarantino dialogue. I really like the way the characters talk in this film and it's filled with lots of really memorable lines: "I said 'plant yourself.' Plants don't talk." and "What's in Mexico?" with the very memorable answer "Mexicans."
The genre shift in the film really leaves some awkward pacing, this is especially noticeable in the second half of the film though where all the action kind of happens in waves giving the characters these long breaks to talk about things between monster attacks.
Luckily his part is pretty minor, but the Asian adopted son of Harvey Keitel, Ernest Liu really just a nothing-special child actor and kind of sticks out like a sore thumb surrounded by all these other really great actors in this film.
And lastly I really don't care for the ending of this film. Its not fulfilling or satisfying at all and seems pretty meaningless. Tarantino has done meaningless endings before, but this one seems un-stylish and like they had nothing else they could think of to end on. What does the end establish? George Clooney's character isn't that bad of a guy? Yeah, the whole movie established that.
This film has one of the greatest opening sequences I've ever seen. The film starts so nonchalantly, then out of nowhere turns into a cut-throat hostage situation that's stylish funny and very interesting. It's 11 minutes long too! That's pretty intense for an opening to a film.
I love the camerawork in this film. Robert Rodriguez really knows how to direct a camera, he said that he actually emulated the way Quentin would frame a shot during specific scenes in this movie. But I gotta say, I think I like the cinematography in this film a lot more than I do in most Tarantino films!
And almost all the acting in this film is really sound, but the two actors that stand out are the two opposite leads George Clooney and Harvey Keitel. It's hard to even conceive this today but back in 1996 George Clooney was a huge actor on the small screen on E.R. but had never been in a movie before. Rodriguez and Tarantino saw the potential and cast him in a completely different role than he usually had and as a result of this film, he was amazing and his career just took off afterwards. Harvey Keitel is just a great actor he just knows how to command the camera's presence in the film, but his role in this film is pretty different than anything I've ever seen him in, and he really nails it. It just shows how great of a range he has as an actor.
From Dusk till Dawn (1996) is a very fun and stylish film that is super clever and a great blend of multiple genres. 4/5 Stars.
Happy watching!
Want more Tarantino goodness? Check back all month for my Tribute to Tarantino in honor of his latest film Django Unchained.
Go back to Tarantino's first film with Reservoir Dogs (1992), check out the first script he wrote (but didn't direct) True Romance (1993) or The smash hit that really put him on the map Pulp Fiction (1994.
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