FROM DUSK TIL DAWN

This film's gotten some mediocre press, they call it 
"overblown" and "dulled by endless cartoonish violence",
but if you're a fan of horror films, "Pulp Fiction", 
Juliette Lewis and/or Harvey Keitel, then you will find 
little to complain about. In this typically atypical 
Tarantino script, E.R's George Clooney & Quentin play 
two brothers on the run with a big bag of stolen cash. 
En route to a rendezvous in Mexico, they kidnap/car-
jack a winnebago containing Harvey Keitel, as a widowed 
preacher (whose lost his faith- I know, I know, but 
Harvey pulls it off) and his children: sexy Juliette 
Lewis and some short-lived young boy. The bad-ass 
brothers need these hostages to get across the border, 
promising to let them go once they get to their 
rendezvous at some out of the way Meixican strip bar 
where they hope to hook up with a crime lord who will 
take them off to their new low-profile Mexican 
retirement villa. The film takes a sharp left turn 
from crime to horror film when the place turns out to 
be a haven for vampires.

Quentin, such a thin-voiced dweeb in "Pulp" actually 
does a competent job here. His usual caffeine-fueled 
geeky-hepness is completely absent, he vanishes 
instead into the role of a revolting sexual psychopath. 
George Clooney does an expert tightrope walk of making 
his character charismatic while never turning him into 
the "killer with a heart of gold". Harvey is his usual, 
and Juliette Lewis looks great with a crossbow. 
There's lots of gore, and the computer morphing is, 
by now, sort of a yawn. But the cartoonishness never 
gets as out-of-control as it was in Rodriguez's 
previous feature, DESPERADO. There's a lot of clever 
humor as the protagonists find themselves trapped in 
the bar, Night-of-the-Living Dead style, and start 
drinking up the stock as they try and remember the 
various vampire movies they've seen to better defend 
themselves. It may sound contrived, and it's very 
misogynisitc, but between Tarantino's script and 
Rodriguez's stylish direction, it's always hip and 
amusedly self-conscious about it's debt to other 
movies, namely the kinetic action/horror films of 
Hong Kong. 

That you drink and smoke heavily while watching this 
picture is heartily recommended. It will also help if 
you have very low expectations. In the oeuvre of 
Tarantino scripted films, this falls just short of 
the great mark, but if you've already seen PULP 
FICTION eleven times, I don't think you'll complain.

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