Entertaining garbage

Rating: Null/10 (9 August 2001)

I'll agree From Dusk Till Dawn is very entertaining. However, that doesn't mean it's any good.
There's nothing wrong with mixing genres within a movie - Woody Allen did it very successfully in Crimes and misdemeanours - but Tarantino needs to use more subtlety than he shows here. This films starts as a crime thriller then suddenly, and I mean suddenly, turns into a horror flick. The change of genre and the ham fisted way it's done indicate, to me, a lack of direction.
I get the feeling Tarantino started writing this film fully intending it to be criminals on the run drama. However, half way through writing he realised he had no second act, let alone an ending. He could have gone down the Wild Bunch or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid roads, but instead he decides to take it into a completely different film all together. That doesn't work and I'm amazed more people didn't pick up on it.

This is a truly appalling film. For all the talent on show here is this best they could do? All should hang their heads in shame. Tarantino's a great writer and director; Rodriguez a great action director; Clooney a leading man of some repute; Keitel and Lewis are outstanding talents but they're all upstaged by the vampire special effects. A sorry state of affairs.
The only positive thing is that I liked the references to Assault on Precinct 13. First through the boys T-shirt and, best of all, the scene where they fight off the vampires at the end of a corridor. The scene bears an uncanny resemblance to the ending of Assault on Precinct 13.