Movies again: From Dusk till Dawn

I'm weighing in with this one a little late... about 15 years. Nevertheless, I saw Quintin Tarantino's From Dusk till Dawn yesterday for the first time.

I honestly can't remember the last time a movie raised my expectations so high and crashed them so low so quickly. Not even the soggiest ending has so disappointed me. And it was a new feeling. I wasn't mad, I didn't feel ripped off (particularly since I didn't pay to see it; a friend brought it over)... I felt sad.

Now, when my buddy showed up, he did say something about "vampires". But I quickly forgot that detail when I started watching the movie.

Starts off in a liquor store in the middle of nowhere. The bad guys, Tarantino and George Clooney (as brothers Richie and Seth Gecko, respectively), are introduced in an extremely clever and quite novel way. I was a little let down when the scene descended into over-the-top violence, but I reminded myself that, hey, this is Quintin Tarantino we're talking about. You can't have a scene about a guy going to the bathroom without a five-alarm homicide (see Pulp Fiction). So, okay, accept there's going to be a lot of gratuitous violence and weed the plot out as you go. That usually works with a Tarantino movie.

The goodies are Harvey Keitel, in an admirably low-key job portraying Jake, a recently-widowered preacher undergoing a deep crisis of faith, and his teenage kids, Kate (Juliette Lewis) and Scott (Ernest Liu), all on vacation in an RV. The set-up here is believable, with the blase conversation and arguments nicely underlining the emotional cap Jake has placed on himself.

The baddies and the goodies all wind up at the same motel, where Richie first demonstrates what an especially bad baddie he is by raping and killing their hostage when Seth makes the mistake of trusting him alone with her. Not long after, Richie and Seth break in on Jake and his family, insisting that the family will conduct them all safely across the Mexican border in the RV. Seth assures them that as long as they follow the rules, they'll be set free afterward. Initially, Jake flatly refuses, even offering to go with them alone, but he is forced to include the kids when Seth makes it plain they'll all die then and there otherwise.

On the road to Mexico, Jake and Seth get into a conversation that, while prickly, serves as the first inclination of a bond between the two men. Richie's attentions, meanwhile, are focused on Kate, which pleases neither of the other two men. The scene at the Mexican border is key. Scott urges his father to appeal to the Mexican guards for help, but Jake realizes the likely outcome of that and gambles that playing for time is the better move. When the guards become suspicious, quick thinking on the part of everyone saves the day, and raises the stock of the family with Seth.

Successfully in Mexico, Jake drives the RV to the rendezvous, a biker bar called "Titty Twister" with sign noting it is open from dusk till dawn. When an altercation at the bar between Seth and the bartender threatens to end in violence, Jake is the voice of reason and compromise who defuses the situation. Sitting at the table together, the five begin to drink, reluctantly at first, but then with a budding comradery. When Seth reveals that he intends to drain the whisky bottle and then break it over the head of a man who touched him, Jake takes a fantastic risk by asking Seth if he's a loser. When Seth demands an explanation, Jake points out that Seth must be a loser not to be able to appreciate all he's won. He has robbed and killed, escaped a huge dragnet across Texas, and has made it safe and clear in Mexico. When Seth realizes the wisdom of Jake's words, he insists that Jake, who has refused to drink with him, share a toast. The two men toast one another's families.

At this point, exactly the one hour mark, the movie ends. As far as I'm concerned, anyway. What should have followed hits the virtual cutting room floor, and what is spliced on is... some other movie, where the names and faces of the characters happen to be just the same.

First, there is a long, gratuitous, and surprisingly boring table dancing scene, so long and self-indulgent that it had me wondering which casting chair enjoyed the baloney-pony ride that clearly paid for it. It also made it clear that we had 75 minutes of plot that needed to be Hamburger Helpered over the 100 minute mark. Well, even that's okay; Tarantino's padding is usually interesting for dialog, at least, and quite often character development as well...

But then come the vampires. Turns out the bar is nothing but the vampire equivalent of a spider web. The rest of the movie is nothing more than the typical zombiefest of huge monster body counts, the slow but sure attrition of human characters, and the retreat to ever smaller rooms and ever more meager survival resources. Tarantino allows himself to ignore that he has spent over the first half of this movie creating a handful of intriguing characters we've come to care about, and pretty much turns them into Star Fleet red shirts who've beamed down on The Wrong Freakin' Planet™.

At the end, everyone's dead but Kate and Seth, and despite the fact that they've lost everyone else in their lives, and everything they've been through together, they basically just take off in different directions after Seth hands Kate a stack of money, as if that would mean anything to a teenage girl who's just lost her brother and surviving parent. I watched it to the end, just to see how disappointed I'd be. You can probably tell: palpably.

I can identify the movie I wish Tarantino had made; the movie I thought he was making around the time Seth and Jake were having their passive-aggressive conversation and I was starting to perk up thinking, "Damn! This is gonna be good! How did I miss this all these years?" That was the movie where they end up at the rendezvous in Mexico, Seth and Jake have learned to trust and even grudgingly admire a few things about one another, and either something goes wrong with the deal Seth's trying to make, or else Richie's intentions towards Kate clash with Seth's promise to let them go if they follow the rules, and in either case Seth has to make a choice between his principles and his love for his maladjusted brother. There's a scene in the movie where Seth has to kill vampire Richie, and he says he hopes he can give Richie the peace in death he couldn't find in life. Why couldn't Tarantino have given us that scene as the conclusion of a taut, razor's edge thriller where the fates of characters we've come to care about really matters? Where was the scene where Jake recovers his faith (and is it necessarily in God when he does get it back)? What was the point of having Jake in a crisis of faith at all, if all the movie needed was some joker who could turn tap water into holy water? Honestly, I have never seen such promising cinematic potential so gratuitously wasted. I suppose you could call Tarantino a genius for being able to build something that impressive and then burn it down himself, but don't ask me to applaud it.

This could have been something the calibre of Reservoir Dogs. Instead, when Mr. Blonde says, "Are you gonna bark all day, little doggie, or are you gonna bite?", Mr. White turns into a werewolf.

Yeah, exactly.

I Buried Star Trek

Warning: spoilers.

I must be the only person on Earth who didn't think much of the new Star Trek movie. But, okay, I'll say it – I don't. The more time goes by, the less I like it.

I went in there expecting... well, hoping for... a look back at the characters we've all known and loved since before most of us were born. I anticipated young actors, steeped in the history of the show, working with reverence and love to really nail their parts, to put in performances that were tributes to the older actors who laid the groundwork in the 60s, and beyond. But we didn't get anything like that.

I'd heard through the grapevine that the movie was actually going to be an "alternate history". I was disappointed to hear that, because I knew that was Klingonese for "we're going to disregard anything inconvenient in the timeline you love to free ourselves to do whatever strikes us as cool". But, I had similar feelings when they started ST:TNG and the other spin-offs, and yet I found something to admire in every one of them (yes, even Voyager – now stop interrupting). What I mean is, I tried to go in with an open mind.

But they were throwing interstellar babies out with the galactic bathwater right from blast-off. What's the first thing that happens? Kirk's father dies. Now, I'm not the shrewdest guy in the world at picking upon where a plotline's heading, but even I got the message being telescoped here: Jim Kirk's going to be the Archetypal Troubled Kid (trademark, patent pending). You could smell it coming like a Ferrengi. And Kirk was born in space... not Iowa, as we heard time and time again in the TV spots for Star Trek IV... as well as from anyone you've ever met from Iowa (the rebuttal is, of course, "Yeah, but Bill Shatner was born in Canada!"). And I happen to remember that Jim Kirk had a brother named Sam who died in that episode of ST:TOS with the giant flying brain cells. So in the first three minutes of the movie, they had basically told me, "Oh, that guy you loved watching on TV as a kid? He doesn't exist. We've replaced him with this guy." Yeah, a smug, arrogant asshole. The traditional Jim Kirk was self-confident and kind of a pussy hound, but he was almost never what you'd call insufferable. But the one in the movie was. He was the guy in high school you just wanted to pound in the face with a stop sign so at least he'd get the message, one way or the other. I COULD NOT STAND THIS GUY AND WANTED HIM TO DIE... BADLY. Now is that any way to feel about Jim Kirk?

Scotty was completely someone else. I've liked Simon Pegg in the things I've seen him in... loved him Shaun of the Dead, and in Hot Fuzz (till it completely went off the rails half way through and started thinking it was The Wicker Man). But he just was not the Scotty I cared about. Scotty had his quirks, but he oozed professionalism and even a certain degree of stubborn, bullheaded military decorum. This Scotty was an anarchistic, addle-minded, goofy fuck-up with just enough brilliance to get by. He was almost the anti-Scotty.

Leonard McCoy was at least... well, you could glean where it was coming from. He seemed to have his roots in the original character. They never said much about Bones's past, but I still don't get the feeling it was as wild as they put it out to be. That seemed forced. He also seemed too old. He came across as being about 40, when Kirk was barely into his 20s. If there was a ten-year gap between their ages in ST:TOS, I'd be surprised.

Now Spock, on the other hand... his portrayal was for me the only really redeeming feature of the movie. I thought it was spot-on. The new version looked like Spock, acted like Spock (even the kid version had me nodding, yeah, that's him), sounded like Spock... yeah, he was Spock. That one they got right, and really nicely, too. Even so... Spock and Uhura?? Okay, I won't say "no way", but it feels really out of character for Spock, and gratuitous as well. Spock's had romances with human women, but... why another member of the bridge crew? Like we can't see where this is taking us in one of the inevitable upcoming sequels...

So I was largely disappointed in the (mis)treatment of the characters. But where they really lost me is when they blew up Vulcan. This is like doing a retelling of the American Revolution in which the British nuke Philadelphia and kill off poor Ben Franklin, just to make you FEEL something. And it worked: I felt fucking angry — at them. To be honest, once they did that, they'd crossed the line. This was not Star Trek... this was your hyperactive cousin's version of Star Trek on the living room rug, just before he crowns you with the fire engine that's standing in for a Romulan Bird of Prey. After that, I didn't give a shit what they did in the movie anymore. I'd checked out. I was just sitting there because I'd A) paid twelve bucks for the privilege and B) was there with a friend. Otherwise, I honestly think I would have been inclined to walk out.

To me, the overall sensation I have coming away from it is that it was hollow. Far too much history was packed into far too little movie. Kirk went up the ladder faster than Derek Wildstar in Star Blazers, which was laughable even when I was nine — and that was a cartoon. Forgive me for thinking one or two movies about Ensign Kirk that show him learning his craft instead of being born to it might have been preferable. But people don't have time for that these days. Hatch the Kirk, let it dry its wings, then get it killing people! Yeah!

Puke.

I won't be attending any of the sequels. If I skip the next two, twenty-four bucks buys a bottle of hooch I can use to forget about the first one for a while...