A film of two halves...

Rating: 5/10 (7 February 2010)

"From Dusk Till Dawn" directed by Robert Rodriguez is quite simply two completely different films bashed into one. The product is a cringe-worthy blend of trashy violence, laughably poor effects on the vampires and Tarantino as an actor. NO WAY!!!
The movie starts off quite well actually. It focuses on two criminal brothers, Seth and Richard Gecko (Clooney and Tarantino) disturbing the lives of the Fuller family (Harvey Keitel, Juliette Lewis and Ernest Liu). The brothers force Keitel and his family to drive their RV across border to Mexico in the aftermath of a liquor shop gunfight bonanza. There are a couple of murders involved and Richie (Tarantino) rapes and murders the hostage that they had been holding as a bargaining chip for the police. This motivates them to find new hostages, queue The Fuller family, and head to Mexico to meet with a mysterious crime lord Carlos. After having their Rv searched at the border, they successfully reach their desired destination and encounter an eccentric and raucous bar, The Titty Twister.
They have no idea what they are getting themselves into...OH NO!!! After experiencing the outrageously sexy snake dance by the appallingly beautiful Salma Hayek, everything goes haywire. There's gore and vampires produced through simply dreadful special effects and the body count needlessly spirals out of control. After several minutes of muddled crap where bodies fly everywhere and ugly vampires seemingly outnumber the humans, the humans breakthrough thanks to the sunlight. Yay! Spare me.
This film started of decently well, I thoroughly enjoyed the turn of Clooney, an immensely gifted actor, who portrayed ruthlessness, sadistic intentions yet feasible levels of negotiability whilst Harvey Keitel is typically impressive as a worried Dad. As for Tarantino, it was lucky that he died halfway through the film, simply because as a director he is nothing short of a genius, as an actor, he is useless.
Robert Rodriguez perfectly pulls the plug on this films potential with an extraordinarily long sequence of tedious vampire slaying, excessive blood and guts and an easy ending. Oh well, what could have been. But what else can we expect from the man who offended us with catastrophes such as Spy Kids.
5/10. Laughable second half to the movie. Tut tut,