Director Robert Rodriguez’s aim is right on target with a
stylish, funny, but violent new movie
”
Once Upon a Time in Mexico,
”
currently playing at Premiere Cinemas.
In his one-hour and 41-minute release, Rodriguez (
”
Four Rooms,
”
”
Spy Kids
”
and
”
The Faculty
”
) creates a dark but sweeping epic of remorse, revenge, violence
and politics.
Make no mistake, this movie was made for action – adventure fans
with a seemingly endless hail of gunfire, blood and explosions.
Director Robert Rodriguez’s aim is right on target with a stylish, funny, but violent new movie “Once Upon a Time in Mexico,” currently playing at Premiere Cinemas.
In his one-hour and 41-minute release, Rodriguez (“Four Rooms,” “Spy Kids” and “The Faculty”) creates a dark but sweeping epic of remorse, revenge, violence and politics.
Make no mistake, this movie was made for action – adventure fans with a seemingly endless hail of gunfire, blood and explosions.
However, Rodriguez has such a deft touch with filming action that many of the scenes, on screen, play out like a bullet-filled ballet.
One of the things that makes this movie stand out is the cinematic beauty of the movie. It is almost as though Rodriguez stole a few pages from the late John Huston’s book with rich, full views of the Mexican countryside from a viewpoint seldom seen in mainstream American movies.
Also something not typical for action pictures is Rodriguez’s patience in developing full, rich and complicated characters.
Possibly the most complicated and interesting character in the movie is Johnny Depp’s portrayal of corrupt CIA agent Sands.
Depp’s performance creates the feeling that Agent Sands is at once corrupt and mentally unstable. But Depp also gives the character a strange dark sense of humor that is hard to resist. Even though his character is planning to start a coup of the Mexican government just so he can steal some money.
Rodriguez also gives El Mariachi, the mythical hitman with a guitar case full of guns, a deeper sense of purpose as he broods over some great loss in his life that has made him swear off of violence altogether.
However, when El Mariachi is brought out of hiding by hardened, stone-cold killer nicknamed Cucuy (which translates into monster or Boogie man in English).
Danny Trejo is especially menacing as Cucuy, who is working for Agent Sands.
The story line centers around Sands’ plot, to overthrow the Mexican government with the help of a renegade general,
However Agent Sands doesn’t want the general to actually take power so he enlists El Mariachi to kill the general before he can seize control of the country.
El Mariachi agrees to kill the general because he wants to exact his revenge on the general who was the one who killed his wife and daughter.
Another interesting device that Rodriguez uses is that although this is the third movie in a trilogy (“El Mariachi,” “Desperado” and “Once Upon a Time”), Rodriguez lets you know that this is actually the fourth story in the series by giving flashbacks of the third installment, which was never filmed.
It is through these flashbacks that audiences get to see his relationship with Salma Hayek’s character develop.
It’s also these flashbacks that are torturing El Mariachi. He knows the only way he can put those images to rest is to kill the general, but surrounded by desperately loyal troops, it won’t be an easy task.
This movie is also important because it has a lot of actual Hispanics playing in the major roles, not just some Caucasians wearing deep tan makeup or sporting fake accents.
And those roles portrayed offer a wide range of character types not just some stereotypical archetype pulled from the 1950s or some other distant past.
