Teenage bad*ss heroes

Rating: 3/10 (14 July 2008)

You know the love of Quentin Tarantino for B-movies, even exploitation movies, so you can't expect too much from this one. Robert Rodriguez shoots it fine, although you can feel in the quiet moments, the 'quasi lulls', that it was not really his movie.
What's very good in From Dusk Till Dawn is the dialog. Tarantino is definitely a master movie speech writer. He may steal from the ton of movies he has digested, he, the mad movie-hungry monster, he does it really fine, as a real connoisseur, not as a low-life grave-digger.
What's really bad in the movie? The sick violence meant to be entertaining. Rich Gecko is a sicko and Tarantino thinks he is being funny. It's horrendous to depict such a degree of realistic violence tongue in cheek. Seth Gecko is supposed to be cleaner, while no smarter, yet that doesn't even it out. If that's the way it was intended then Seth Gecko is a bad excuse for his brother's excesses. The part in the desert where the body count goes way up is much more gore than the exposition with the Gecko bros but it's only cheap teenage stuff. You may feel it's dull as I do, or enjoy it because you like cheap; the fact is: sick realistic violence in the beginning is not washed out by the funky carnage that makes the bulk of the movie.
Ironically enough, the disturbing start was more interesting than the contrived party in the Mexican desert. The last shot was great though.