Review of From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) by Aaron A — 10 Jul 2011

"Fight now, cry later.".

Synopsis: Robbers-on-the-lam Seth and Richard Gecko take an ex-preacher and his kids hostage. On a race to the Mexican border, they rendezvous at a cantina, not knowing the owners and clientele are bloodthirsty vampires.

The first half of the film is an excellent aesthetication of violence and violent people. Although the opening sequence is quite over-the-top, the rest of the first half is grounded in reality, even though the direction is quite stylized. Once you make it to the cantina and Salma Hayek (who looks stunning here) performs her hypnotizing dance, you think you have this picture squarely measured as an enjoyable homage to sin and violence with talented filmmakers behind the camera.

But then the director Robert Rodriguez pulls the rug out from underneath you in the last couple acts of the picture. The film turns highly supernatural and loses just about all of the interesting dialogue that made the first half of the picture worthwhile. The moment that Salma Hayek's face turned into a blood-thirsty being from hell (literally), I was perplexed. Not at how the quality of the film can be so instantaneously ruined mind you, as the supernatural parts are quite campy and funny, but at why such talented filmmakers couldn't see that the better film was the one in the first half, and did not stay with it.

Though the film is highly disjointed thanks to the twist half-way through. It is more than worthy of a second viewing.