the unlikely marriage of "Pulp Fiction" (1994) and "Evil Dead" (1981)

Rating: 7/10 (18 March 2007)

Sourced from a story Quentin Tarantino penned in his youth and dusted off in the wake of the "Pulp Fiction" impact, this Robert Rodriguez effort achieves this incredible hybrid. I must say I am uneven about the two authors of these credentials. For Tarantino, I thoroughly enjoyed "Kill Bill: Volume I and II" (2003/2004) and at a pinch "Reservoir Dogs" (1992) but "Pulp Fiction" isn't in my straitjacket of the most memorable movies made in the nineties. As for Sam Raimi, the "Evil Dead" saga hasn't got a prominent place in my favorite horror movies but "a Simple Plan" (1998) and the adventures of Peter Parker/Spider-Man gave me a positive side from him.
I could have the same judgment about Rodriguez himself: I saw "the Faculty" (1999) when it was theatrically released and I forgot all about it. Ditto for "Sin City" (2005) which was visually a black splendor but I don't remember much about the story. On the positive side, "From Dusk Till Dawn" entertained me until the last shot. It's cut in two distinct parts. The first one has more the look of a road-movie imbued with thriller with stunts, shootings, corpses galore and a dash of suspense. It's the part I favor the most. The second half of the film changes territory and takes a leap into the gore movie sourced from the eighties with blood, special effects to satisfy the genre. There is also a little of George A. Romero's masterwork "the Night of the Living Dead" (1968) and I do think this part is weaker than the first. The action becomes a bit sluggish and special effects are sometimes too intrusive. But perhaps, it was an inescapable rule to this kind of story.
The amount is a film rooted in two different cinematographic genres and if it's a little hard to swallow, it means to jump on a genre while jettisoning the other, Rodriguez's effort has positive things in its contents to have a good time. Sequences are shot with care and shrewdness like the very first one. Like in "Reservoir Dogs", we won't properly see the bloody break-in but just verbal facts from the characters and the TV. It is also permitted to hail Tarantino for his sharp dialogs. My favorite lines are when George Clooney and Tarantino take Harvey Keitel and his son hostage and Juliette Lewis arrives in the room from the swimming pool:

What's, um, going on? - We're having a bikini contest and you just won.

Later in the van on the road that leads to Mexico:

Where are you taking us? - Mexico - What's in Mexico? - Mexicans.

Black humor shouldn't be neglected like the sequence when the journalist says the increasing number of killed people after the hold-up. And the actors seem to have fun as much as we do, notably Clooney and Tarantino in psychopathic killers who shoot first and ask themselves questions then.
This B movie won't cater for all tastes for evident reasons but as it is painstakingly made as a whole, the alliance Rodriguez/Tarantino paid off well and it's a film to which I would return with pleasure.