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Movie: Once Upon A Time In Mexico
Starring Antonio Banderas, Johnny Depp, Salma Hyack, Willem Dafoe
Written and Directed by Robert Rodriguez (Columbia/Dimension)
Reviewed by Rusty Pipes
Antonio Banderas, Selma Hyack and Danny Trejo. Spy Kids Three-D, right? No, it's Once Upon A Time In Mexico and that means mayhem, straight, no chaser. Wait, did I say straight? Director Robert Rodriguez hardly plays things straight -- this movie is another helping of his special kind of disjointed violent fantasy that he showed us with such panache in Desperado.
Here in OUATIM, Banderas as El Mariachi again captures the caged tiger dangerousness that makes Rodriguez's film what it is. Balancing him, Johnny Depp gives us a deliciously bent performance as Sands, a CIA agent (who even wears a T-shirt with those initials at one point -- for Cleavage Inspectors Association). At the end he becomes a sort of Zatoichi with guns, a rather radical change when he seems to be behind all the plotting against El Presidente. Depp's fun but he certainly doesn't steal the film, and neither does Willem Dafoe, whose character, Barillo, is despicable enough but seems to be a rather run of the mill bad guy when all the smoke clears.
Salma Hyack had no opportunity to steal the film. She's hardly seen and if you ask me, that's grounds for a truth in advertising suit since she's so prominent in the posters and the previews. Nope, she's already dead and only appears in El Mariachi's flashbacks. Twelve minutes tops; even the minor characters played by Enrique Igelesias, Ruben Blades and Mickey O'Rourke get more screentime. And by the way, weren't the characters played by Danny Trejo and Cheech Marin killed back in Desperado? What kind of gangster fantasy is this anyway?
It could be that I'm too tough on it; for all its stylized and repetitious violence OUATIM certainly works on an escapist-rollercoaster level. Rodriguez gave it a terrific soundtrack and may even be making a backhanded call to rise up against Mexican druglords with this movie, but there are so many distractions here it's impossible to say for sure. In the end Once Upon A Time In Mexico is just an excuse for well choreographed gunplay.
The Skinny:
Am I glad I saw the film? It was sort of fun once, but the more I think about it the less I like it.
Would I go to see it again? No
© 2003 - Rusty Pipes