Calling this an El Mariachi film is a bit of a stretch. Really, it’s a Johnny Depp movie, as Sheldon Sands is the fiber that binds this movie together.
CIA Agent Sands has come to Mexico to kill a few people, and he’s hired, amongst others, El Mariachi to carry out his plans. On the one hand, he wants El to kill General Marquez, who killed El’s family back in the day. But he also want to kill Armando Barillo, who has hired Marquez to kill the Mexico President.
Really, it’s the CIA at its worst.
You can skip this movie, unless you’ve seen the other two in rapid succession. Really, it’ll be OK to skip this one. Depp does a great job, but it’s only tangentially related to the other two El Mariachi films.
Why is that? Well, Antonio Pendejo and Salma Hayek had both become big stars by the time he got around to making this third movie, and they just weren’t as available as he needed them to be. So, instead of making a sequel, really, he made another movie.
Really. As you watch this, see how many scene there are in which Antonio and Salma appear on scene, in frame, together. It’s few. Very few. As with the original El Mariachi film, he makes up for this though fancy editing, but really, for as fancy as this film is, the two should appear in frame together. But they don’t.
In all honesty, I love the Depp character. He’s awesome. I’d love to see more movies with the character. His riding off into the sunset, third arm flapping, is just classic, as is his hunt for the perfect puerco pibil — because, really, aren’t we all looking for the perfect puerco pibil recipe?
The take away from this movie isn’t the story; it’s the Cooking With Robert Rodriguez extra, about making puerco pibil. It’s not a bad film, it’s just not a great film, and it’s not much of an addition to the other two movies in this series.
