"...of course, the story may have been embellished..."
- Cheech Marin in Once Upon A Time In Mexico
Once upon a time in 1993, tyro director/writer Robert Rodriguez shot a spicy little indie flick about a guy who packed heat in his guitar case and shot up bad guys. It was a simple film, populated with an array of taciturn, relatively unknown Mexican actors, and consisted more or less of the titular hero, El Mariachi, blowing away these nasty dudes who are screwin with him. ok, fast forward ten years: El Mariachi has become a cult favorite, Rodriguez has become a millionaire and the saga of the pistol touting troubadour has finally reached its third and final installment, namely Once Upon A Time In Mexico. My, how things are different if only to stay the same....
OUATIM, like Desperado before it, isn’t that distant story wise from Mariachi. a) Our hero, Antonio Banderas, still shoots bad guys. b) Rodriguez still makes it look fancy. c) Theres this wry, ironic humor dispersed throughout that i think Michael Bay has secretly tried emulating and failed miserably at. The only difference between this movie and its predecessors is the garnish that is added for extra flavor, to keep the same shoot 'em up salsa western formula alive; and believe me, garnish it certainly has.
I am happy to report most of this garnish is great stuff: bigger explosions, more elaborate gunfights, cooler camera work, steamier femme fatales and heroines and an ever-present chilled humor. The centerpiece to all these extrapolations is Johnny Depp, who, i guess, decided sometime last year that, what the hell, it was time to start becoming a great american actor. He made that pirate movie work and he keeps this one interesting too, this time around as a quirky, corrupt CIA agent. From his colorful one-liners and off the wall crusty gringo expressions to a hilariously conspicuous fashion sense (what undercover CIA agent wears a taco bell tee shirt and blue blocker sunglasses?), Depp does what he does best: takes roles that other actors might do by-the-numbers and plays the wild card for all its worth.
The rest of the peripheral story pieces/plots/characters are effective aswell; after a while it becomes a veritable who's who of up-incomers and career revivalists. Rodriguez has made sure that everyone has got their bit, and nearly everyone in the impressive cast rises to the challenge: Selma Hayek gets away with being on screen something close to only ten minutes through her patented set of sultry pose and stare stances, Mickey Rourke gets away with being a Chihuahua stroking Yankee henchman by lending a goofy yet urgent ambiance to key scenes, Danny Trejo gets away with playing an underwritten goon by playing it with his usual brilliant dose of menace (he puts the grrr in grizzled), Eva Mendes gets away with being the most unrealistically drawn character in the story due to her ready sneer and how good she looks in those little federale tee shirts (she warrants a different kind of grrr) and William Defoe gets away with pretending to be Mexican because he reminds me of Charlie Heston in Touch of Evil and Orson Wells/ Heston flicks rock.
Enrique Iglesias, however, does not get away with being one of El's languid backup men, even though he does shoot fire from a guitar case at one point, because he got to be in all those glossy music videos kissing handfuls of those ridiculously good-looking starlets/models/tennis nymphs. ok...maybe thats not fair.
Theres a lot of story here and im got going into it. you, dear reader, will simply have to take my word that its a fun ride and that the ending is particularly rewarding. Depp's transformation from sinfully cocky and cool anti-hero to humbled, vulnerable and yet comically ironic and stoic lamb-to-the-slaughter is either a weirdly perfect redemption or a half-baked one- depending on your perspective. Oh, and the Mariachi gets to shoot people across entire rooms...which...if its your kind of thing...is pretty insane.
Final word: ain't Shakespeare, wont win no Oscars but is one hundred times more entertaining than The Hours.