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Once Upon a Time in Mexico
USA 2003
produced by
Elizabeth Avellan, Carlos Gallardo, Robert Rodriguez for Troublemaker Studios/Columbia, Dimension Films
directed by Robert Rodriguez
starring Antonio Banderas, Johnny Depp, Willem Dafoe, Mickey Rourke, Salma Hayek, Eva Mendes, Danny Trejo, Enrique Iglesias, Marco Leonardi, Ruben Blades, Cheech Marin, Gerardo Vigil, Pedro Armendàriz jr, Julio Oscar Mechoso, Miguel Couturier, Tony Valdez, José Luis Avendano, Natalia Torres
written, edited & music by Robert Rodriguez
Mariachi
review by
Mike Haberfelner
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Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
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Drug lord Barilla (Willem Dafoe) wants the Mexican president (Pedro
Almendàriz jr) killed, so he hires General Marquez (Gerardo Vigil), who wants
to overthrow the pres anyways, to do the dirty job for quite a sum of money.
This brings rogue CIA agent & loveable maniac Sands (Johnny Depp) into the
game, who wants both the pres dead & quite the sum of money promised to
Marquez ... & he figures the easiest way to get the money from Marquez (who
naturally is not very likely to just hand it over) is to have him assassinaed
as well after he has shot the pres ... & thus he hires the Mariachi
(Antonio Banderas), who still has a score to settle with Marquez who has killed
his girlfriend (Salma Hayek, returning to him in endless, meaningless dream
sequences). & the Mariachi soon calls his 2 Mariachi friends (Enrique
Iglesias, Marco Leonardi) to help him kill Marquez. & here is where it
gets silly: for a reason or reasons unknown, Sands shares some of his knowledge
aboutt he assassination of the pres & everything else with a rundown ex-FBI
agent (Rubén Blades), who still has an old score wioth Barillo to settle,
& Mr FBI in turn soon teams up with Chambers (Mickey Rourke), Barillo's
right hand man on the run from the US-authorities but tired of running away
& more than happy to help the FBI (well, I told you it would get silly).
& then Sands has also a romance going with Barillo's daughter (Eva Mendes),
who eventually though will wind up taking his eyes out (literally) so he can't
identify Barillo who at some deliberate point in the movie had plastic surgery
& faked his own death. That doesn't stop Sands from shooting his way
through the rest of the picture though. In the end, the 3 Mariachis suddenly
change sides on a whim & become the president's bodyguards, & pretty
much all the baddies end up dead, exxcept for Sands, & the president of
course is saved. The first 2 Mariachi-movies were slim
shoot-em-ups, with only a skeleton of a plot to hang its invariably
tongue-in-cheek action on, with Once upon a Time in Mexico though, the
audience is presented with a convoluted & essentially illogical plot which
is supposed to serve as motivatin for the violence that ensues, but is
incomprehensible to a point that one stops to care. All is further hampered by
various subplots that don't take the story even one step further, like the
Mariachi's dreams of his dead girlfriend (seemingly only a method to work Salma
Hayek into the plot) or the drinking problem of one of his Mariachi-colleagues.
Also, Johnny Depp, normally quite a competent actor, totally blows his chance
to suitably camp up his role & make it work on a fun-level.
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find Once Upon a Time in Mexico at adultvideouniverse.com
