From Dusk Till Dawn Review
Written by: Steve Lewis
A kick ass ride through hell and back. Robert Rodriquez and Quentin Tarantino's raw encounter with the undead blood suckers. Two bank robbers hold up at a all night bar. Unaware that the bar attendees are full of vampires. They must fight their way through hell and brimstone to stay alive until dawn.
For George Clooney, this is a stray roll. He's usually the nice suave sleek slick kinda guy you see in other films such as Ocean's Eleven, Intolerable Cruelty, or O'Brother Where Art Thou? Being Seth Gecko is a role not anyone could pull off. You have to be slick, you have to be smooth, you have to have nifty one liners and Clooney can pull many of those being suave as he is. As for Tarantino playing Richie Gecko, another great part for him. Tarantino has always come off to me as being a weirdo and Richie is a weirdo, pervert, womanizer, and a killer. What a great combination.
I like how the story unfolds itself on how the Gecko problems meet forcably Harvey Keital, Julia Lewis, and that asian kid that nobody knows. Seeing Keital playing the part of a preacher is wacked out in itself. He's usually the hardass. But you don't really get a sense of tension between the two groups. They even socially talk as if they were good aquintances. Seth is more of the gentleman type but rough around the edges or better yet good at the heart with good intentions but still an all out bad guy. You find Seth to be likeable and find Richie to be more of the guy you wish you never meet.
If the Titty Twister was a real place, I certainly would go to it. It looks hella fun. Anyways, I mentioned earlier in the John Carpenter's Vampires review that the western style setting is always a great setting for vampire films. Once again, great example of a western-style vampire flick. We encounter plenty of mexicans who eventually turn into ugly ass vampires with weak skin and brittle bodies? Meh, it's different but I would rather see them tougher. This is where we meet the best characters in the movie.
Sex Machine, played by the great horror icon Tom Savini, is a biker with a whip and a cock and balls six shooter. Although we don't get to know much about Sex Machine, we did get to see him kick some ass. Then we come to Frost, Fred Williamson, who plays a badass trucker who can kill vampires with table legs. Again, we don't get much of his background except that he was in Vietnam. Plus you have others great supporting actors such as the bar tender (Danny Trego), the sexy ass Satanico Pandemoium (Selma Hayek), and the border police, a bouncer, and a partner in crime (Cheech Marin) makes up a allstar cast.
Every vampire had a different look. Some looked like deformed old folks and the others just had the plain old vampire teeth. Sunlight turns them into explosions and a jackhammer jacks them (awesome unique weapon by the way). The arsenal was rag tagged and jimmy rigged small arms.
What I like about Rodriguez's films is that he shoots at the best angles. I don't know if Tarantino helped him with that aspect because Tarantino is good for that. The soundtrack is awesome and I suggest going out and buying that. "Let's kill that fucking band!"