Film: Mexico goes South

"Are you a Mexican, or a Mexi-can't?"

 Definitely the best tag line we've seen in a while. Once Upon a Time in Mexico is clever--sort of--in a sun-kissed, blood-spattered kind of way. Antonio Banderas is beautiful, also in a sun-kissed and blood-spattered kind of way. Always mysterious and darkly, dramatically graceful, he sings, he strums, he flashes dark eyes and big guns, prancing through life with his tight pants and shiny, shiny boots. El Mariachi can do anything--like James Bond, but not so bloody obvious.

 Mexico is the follow-up to Robert Rodriguez's Desperado (1995); itself a remake of El Mariachi (1992). Antonio Banderas is the Mariachi himself, a guitar-toting gunslinger avenging deaths of the loved and lost. A few members of the old Desperado crew appear, including Salma Hayek and Cheech Marin, but the rest must have died somewhere along the way. Johnny Depp stars opposite Banderas as an errant CIA double-agent, as pretty as a pirate and happy to steal the show.

 Still, El Mariachi is the star. He knows what's going down, even if we don't. He plays the game like a finely tuned guitar, coaxing answers and information like music from the clumsy instruments of his suffering. Mexico is an obvious film. Life is for living and movies are for watching--don't overthink this one. In general, everyone is a bad guy and should be shot on sight.

 Really, violence can be fun. Dehumanized and desensitized as we are, Mexico is truly a study in the creative administration of pain. Bones can splinter like that? Flesh explodes like that? Fortunately, gunfight sequences appear in stop-and-go slow motion, the better to observe both entry and exit wounds. Examine the ballistics of bloodshed when the next bad guy gets his guts smeared across the wall. There is much to be learned.

 Mexico is exhilarating and deeply, gutturally satisfying. When El Mariachi clicks his spurs and draws the gun you didn't know he had, you'll get that nice twinge of vicarious badass adrenaline, and it feels good. While it lasts.

 El Mariachi has nothing to live for. He's hopelessly romantic, recklessly independent and relentlessly self-serving. He doesn't care if he lives or dies. And hey, neither do we. Without motivation, chasing revenge for the bitter sake of revenge, El Mariachi is, sadly, a little pathetic.

 If El Mariachi was a low-budget child genius and Desperado an upscale resale, Mexico is like leftover refried beans. When the dust finally settles, we're left with a sense of relief and the weighty conviction of finality. Holster your pistols, wipe your boots and strut away into the sunset; because that--as they say--is that.