Forefather to Grindhouse and Stepchild to Natural Born Killers

Rating: 6/10 (24 August 2011)

The way I see it, there are two distinct ways to see this movie. One could bemoan it for robbing them of a full Tarantino movie, delivered in his prime, by saddling the plot with an unexpected swerve into Robert Rodriguez exploitation. Or they could sit back and enjoy it for the utterly unpredictable, bewildering, guns-blazing, "I can't believe that just happened," speed boat ride that it is. I fall into the latter camp, and while both directors have undeniably made more intelligent, deep, well-rounded pictures, there's no denying From Dusk Till Dawn has a certain unusual charm that's tough to nail down. Tarantino's script elaborates loosely on a lot of the social observations he'd originally made in Natural Born Killers, while the film's semi-serious, tongue-in-cheek attitude is an obvious precursor to the superduo's later collaboration on Grindhouse, marking it as an evolutionary milestone of sorts for both. George Clooney steals almost every scene as a take-no-crap heistmeister who's desperate to cross the Mexican border, Harvey Keitel seems unusually understated as the soft-spoken jaded preacher, and Tarantino himself breaks out his C-level acting chops in an appropriately stiff, detached performance as Clooney's creepy, sexual predator of a brother. This isn't quite the joyride I'd remembered it as, but it still provides a few laughs and six barrels full of blood.