Movie Review: Once Upon A Time In Mexico (2003)

Robert Rodriguez concludes his El Mariachi trilogy, but bloat creeps in and the fun factor suffers at the hands of too many characters vying for space in a convoluted plot. Rodriguez is unable to follow in the footsteps of Sergio Leone's "dollars trilogy" and make the jump from enjoyable camp to delicious epic. Once Upon A Time In Mexico aims for grand elements, but never comes close to scaling the necessary heights.

El Mariachi (Antonio Banderas) is recruited by CIA Agent Sands (Johnny Depp) to assassinate the vicious General Marquez, who is conspiring with drug lord Barillo (Willem Dafoe) to overthrow the Mexican President. El Mariachi is eager to gain revenge on Marquez, who brutally killed his wife Carolina (Salma Hayek, seen only in flashback) and young daughter. Rattling around the thick edges of the plot are Billy Chambers (Mickey Rourke), who hangs around Barillo's compound; anti-narcotics agent Ajedrez (Eva Lopez); former FBI Agent Ramirez (Ruben Blades), and local thug leader Cucuy (Danny Trejo). Several of these characters will switch allegiances as the plot against the president progresses. And that is not all: Cheech Marin in the local informant helping Sands; the President has a double-crossing advisor; Barillo is planning face-changing plastic surgery; and El Mariachi once again calls on two heavily armed friends, Lorenzo and Fideo, who show up to join the action.

It is a rare for a movie to suffer from being too short, but Once Upon A Time In Mexico, at just over 100 minutes, simply isn't hefty enough to carry everything that is trying to happen within it. Characters are introduced in a hurry or hardly at all, events seem rushed, motivations are barely sketched in, and with so many characters vying to tell their tale, the action sequences now actually get in the way.

Johnny Depp manages to stand out as the conniving Agent Sands, but only by going so far over the top, and having his character meet such a gruesome destiny, that he forcefully etches himself into the memory. Banderas seems disengaged, and most of the other actors have too little screen time to make a lasting impression.

Once Upon A Time In Mexico offers a few moments of enjoyment, but the underground feel and wild abandonment of the earlier El Mariachi movies is gone, replaced by plot congestion caused by character cramming.

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Movie Review: Desperado (1995)

All style and limited substance, but when the style is this flashy, a lot can be forgiven. Desperado is the first major Robert Rodriguez production, and it helped to propel the careers of both Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek. And it doesn't hurt that Quentin Tarantino contributes an unforgettable 10 minutes to add a further injection of irreverence.

The story, a sequel to Rodriguez's El Mariachi, is the most standard revenge fare. Buscemi (Steve Buscemi, as unsettling as ever) enters a filthy bar in a small Mexican town and spins a tall tale about a heavily armed stranger on a mass-killing spree, looking for a certain gang lord called Bucho. The bar is indeed a front for Bucho's business, and the bartender (Cheech Marin) and all the supposed customers are Bucho's men.

The stranger is El Mariachi (Banderas), Buscemi's friend, and he is on a single-minded mission to kill Bucho (Joaquim de Almeida), as revenge for Bucho having killed his girlfriend. El Mariachi arrives at the bar, and using the arsenal of heavy weaponry he keeps hidden in a guitar case, kills everyone in it after an ultra intense firefight. He then survives an assassination attempt by the mysterious knife-throwing Navajas (Danny Trejo) -- Buscemi is not so fortunate. El Mariachi hooks up with Carolina (Hayek), who runs a library in a town where no one reads: the library is another front for Bucho's business. After several more encounters with Bucho's men, one featuring two El Mariachi friends who also use ridiculous guitar-disguised firepower, Bucho's loyalists are annihilated and a final confrontation unfolds.

Faithful to the philosophy of never using one bullet when 20 are available, Rodriguez fills the screen with dead bodies, literally piled up at the end of every battle scene. Cleaners are brought in to mop up the rivers of blood soaking into the Mexican soil after El Mariachi is done perforating his opponents with an army's worth of ammunition. Entire wars have been fought with less firepower than is on display in Desperado.

Banderas plays his role seriously, and gets away with it, his intensity matching the action even if the revenge motivation is too flimsy to carry the amount of bloodshed. Hayek brings a sultry victimized presence to her role as Carolina, not straying too far from the eye-candy specifications but fitting perfectly into the exaggerated mayhem. Cheech Marin is quietly hilarious as the bartender, conveying emotion with a combination of eyebrow movements, burps, and undisguised glances of contemptible disgust.

Desperado is all very much tongue in cheek, never more so than when Tarantino shows up at the bar and unspools a long-winded and totally irrelevant story about a man making a bet related to long-distance pissing into a beer glass. The story is as meaningless as the film, and as ridiculously enjoyable.



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