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Once Upon a Time in Mexico Robert Rodriguez loves technology, so much so that when George Lucas demonstrated high-definition digital video to him at Skywalker Ranch back in 2000, he was hooked and decided to push the medium as far as it'd go. At the same time, his friend and occasional collaborator Quentin Tarantino suggested that he make a sequel to Desperado in the style of Sergio Leone even going as far as to suggest a title, Once Upon a Time in Mexico.
Desperado was itself a sort of sequel to El Mariachi, which legend tells us cost only $7000 to make and was funded by Rodriguez selling himself to medical science. Both movies feature a guitar playing hero - El Mariachi - played by Carlos Gallardo in the first movie and by Antonio Banderas in the second. But bad guys keep trying to shoot him, so El Mariachi has no choice but to blow them away.
Rodriguez is known for doing things cheap: not that his productions look cheap - far from it. But why pay for more crew than you need when Rodriguez can do it himself? On virtually all his movies, he’s done just about everything except act in them. As well as directing his major features: El Mariachi, Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn, The Faculty, Spy Kids, Spy Kids 2 and Spy Kids 3D, he’s also written them, edited them, produced them, done the special effects on many of them, been the cinematographer and camera operator on some and even composed the scores!
And so it was on Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Rodriguez again did just about everything, even writing the soundtrack. And he shot it on high definition video, convinced that film was dead.
Once Upon a Time in Mexico looks sumptuous, and it's difficult to believe that it isn't film. Rodriguez seems to have brought out a warmth with the medium that Lucas didn't manage with Attack of the Clones. He'll probably be a better poster child for Digital Video than the Star Wars director because Rodriguez demonstrates how it can be used in a conventional movie, not a special effects extravaganza.
While Rodriguez may have cut down on the crew, he's not skimped on the stars: Antonio Banderas returns as the guitar-playing assassin, El Mariachi, and Salma Hayek is seen in flashback as his beloved Carolina. Johnny Depp steals the show as CIA agent Sands, Mickey Rourke demonstrates why it's a crime he isn't on our screens more, and then there's Eva Mendes, the ugly mug of Danny Trejo, Enrique Iglesias, Marco Leonardi, Cheech Marin, Rubén Blades and William Dafoe.
You can't throw a brick without hitting some talent.
But Once Upon a Time in Mexico is not without problems, though: the script is a mess. If there is a downside to being an auteur, like Rodriguez, it's that there's no-one to exercise control, no-one with an objective eye. With a tighter script, this last instalment of the Desperado franchise, would perhaps make more sense and be easier to follow.
But in spite of the script, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, is great fun. It's a pastiche of the spaghetti western that crams in as many Mexican stereotypes as it can and doesn't care. People are shot, blood spurts, the bad guys get what's coming to them and the good guys emerge without a scratch.
The only exception is Johnny Depp’s agent Sands, who gets his eyes gouged out, but then the script can't seem to make up his mind if he’s a good guy or a bad guy, but in either case he’s easily the funniest character and lights up the screen whenever he’s on it. In a sense, it's really Depp’s movie not Banderas’ movie, who seems too resigned to his fate to be as interesting as the Machiavellian Sands. Besides, it's Sands who gets all the great lines, such as “Kid, have you ever shot one of these before? Good. You shouldn't because they are very, very bad... but right now I need you to kill that guy for me.” And “I can't see you Fuckmook, I have no eyes.” Classic stuff.
The movie thankfully never takes itself very seriously and there is great humour to be found in it. Let's face it, any movie that has Enrique Iglesias fire a flame-thrower from a guitar case can’t be aspiring to high art!
At least Robert Rodriguez, to quote Agent Sands, is a Mexican, not a Mexican't.
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