Art La Flamme

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.

After El Mariachi, Robert Rodriguez signed a deal to make Desperado. He even signed on Antonio Banderas to play the hero, giving some heavier weight to the role. All in all, it’s a pretty decent film.

El Mariachi, aka El, has returned to Acu?a, to avenge the death of Domin? by killing Bucho. But he’s no killer, so he enlists the help of his gringo friend, played by Steve Buscemi, to come into town ahead of him and scope things out.

Buscemi makes a great scout. He heads into the local watering hole, where Cheech Marin is the bartender. It’s full of all kinds of characters. He starts into his story about having run into the now legendary Mariachi, and really plays up how lethal he is and how he’s looking for Bucho. It’s actually a surprise when he makes it out of there alive.

It’s not a surprise when El comes into same bar and more or less levels it. Robert Rodriguez and Antonio Banderas, who I lovingly refer to as Antonio Pendejo out of habit, really put together a well told, well shot sequence with the gun fight in the bar. You almost think that the bartender is going to make it out alive, yet something deep down tells you that, yeah, he’s going to catch a bullet or ten and die. It’s neat to see what Rodriguez can do with access to a little money.

And I think this was the first semi-big movie in which Banderas played the lead. He’d done a ton of stuff before hand, but only a few main-stream-America films. It definitely was the first big thing for Salma Hayek.

She plays Carolina, a local gal who own a bookstore. El ends up with her when he leaves the big bar shootout and it in need of a little Bondo and some bandages. Really, she becomes the new Domin? as El heads off in search of Bucho.

In addition to Pendejo and Buscemi and Cheech Marin and Salma Hakey, Danny Trejo is in this film. You’d know him if you saw him – big Mexican guy with a tattoo on chest his of a woman wearing a sombrero. He is perfectly cast in this movie as a bag guy. The other surprise is seeing Joaquim de Almeida in this film — he went on to do great things in Clear and Present Danger and Behind Enemy Lines.

It’d be easy to look at this movie, see the similarities with the first El Mariachi movie, and declare that Rodriguez just remade the movie but with a bigger budget. But that wouldn’t be fair. It’s a different tale, and a real outgrowth of the first one. Yes, you could see Desperado without seeing El Mariachi, but you shouldn’t.

Robert Rodriuez really comes into his element with this film. He went on to make other movies, even other movie with Pendejo (Spy Kids and a few spin offs), and he formed a working relationship with Quentin Tarantino (who makes a cameo in this film). I liked Sin City, and its dark look (another comic book made into a movie) and am looking forward to what he does with Sin City 2.

This is a Netflix movie. You’re not going to buy it, most likely, unless you see all three and are just crazy in love with all three. It’s the best of the three, I think, but it’s good, not great as a film.

This is the cheapest movie I have ever seen.

And that’s not a bad thing.

Robert Rodriguez managed to scrape together $9000, mainly from taking part in clinical studies for experimental drugs. He went with his friend Carlos Gallardo to Gallardo’s hometown of Acu?a, Mexico, specifically to make the first of three Spanish-language straight-to-VHS-in-Mexico films.

Talk about aiming high. El Mariachi, the first, was good enough that Columbia Pictures bought the rights, refinished the film (for distribution as a movie, not a VHS tape), and released it in the States.

In the movie, our guitar player hero has traveled to Acu?a in search of work. He wants to be a mariachi, like his forefathers. Instead, he’s mistaken for Azul, who’s just out of jail and exacting revenge on his old partner, Moco. With love for and support from the lady who owns the local bar, he tries to work out the misperception that he’s a killer on the loose, only in the end to see her gunned down, himself shot in the hand, and his future as a mariachi ended.

It sounds simple enough. But it’s a really good story, and it’s laid out very well. Yes, it’s incredibly cheap, and yes, there are a million little things you’ll spot in this movie. But it’s a very good movie.

And it’s a thought provoking one. If Rodriguez and (small) crew could make this for less than $8k, why the hell do the big budget movies like Bangkok Dangerous (at a cost of $45 million!) suck so much?

I’ll take El Mariachi over Bangkok Dangerous any day.

Oh, and if you do get a chance to see this move, plan on seeing it twice. Watch it once, and then watch it again with the bonus commentary from Robert Rodriguez. He explains in great detail how he made the movie, what worked and what didn’t, how he saved money and how to make a movie for $7k. I usually don’t go for these kinds of commentaries, but this one is good and it’s a perfect match for this little film.