Amazon.com video review:
Filmmaker Robert Rodriguez captured the world's attention with
this little 1992 film, made for only $7,500 (not counting the cost of
a little prerelease polish) and originally destined for the Spanish-
language video market. An enterprising studio executive saw the
enormous Spielbergian talent in Rodriguez's work and decided to get
El Mariachi out to the international public. A tight,
inventive, highly entertaining movie from start to finish, the story
concerns a guitarist mistaken for a hired killer and forced to fight a
local crime boss and his army of goons. Rodriguez makes clever use of
every available prop, from guitar cases to a beat-up bus to a
funny-looking dog. But his promise as a director--he went on to make
Desperado and
From Dusk till
Dawn--is evident in every scene. The DVD release pairs this
film with its sequel, Desperado, and has optional full-screen
and widescreen presentations, an interview with Rodriguez, theatrical
trailer, Rodriguez's short film Bedhead, optional
English-dubbed soundtrack, optional French and Spanish soundtracks,
and optional English, French, and Spanish subtitles. --Tom
Keogh
Amazon.com video review:
Before Robert Rodriguez's El Mariachi, Mexicans in North
American action films were typically maids, drug dealers, or prison
inmates. Even if the Cisco Kid was a friend of yours, you
handled a dust cloth or a Mac-10 if you lasted in Hollywood longer
than a New York minuto.
But when El Mariachi crossed the border in 1992, things changed.
Granted, it still involved a drug lord in a shoot-em-up, bang-bang,
but this time the good guy was a Mexican.
Austin-based Rodriguez made El Mariachi for a fistful of pesos and a
little help from his friends. He wrote, directed, coproduced,
edited, and operated the camera. Plus, he assembled a cast that had
never acted before to work por nada. All for a paltry $7,000, a
milagro without a beanfield war.
Desperado continues the outrageous action adventure. Working with a
much bigger budget, Rodriguez returns the nameless mariachi to nonstop
action. Again thrust into a world he never made, the hero takes his
guitar-case arsenal deep into the criminal labyrinth of Bucho (Joaquim
de Almeida), el gran chingon of the Mexican drug lords. With an
amigo
(Steve Buscemi) and a beautiful bookstore owner (Salma Hayek), el
mariachi confronts an outrageous cast along the way, including a
bartender (Cheech Marin), a drug deal pick-up guy (Quentin Tarantino),
and the original mariachi (coproducer Carlos Gallardo) as a new-found
compa'.
Antonio Banderas has the lead this time, and if he's not quite up to
the challenge, it's probably because he's Spanish, not Mexican, a
distinction not lost by anyone raised on what the popular media now
calls "ethnic food."
That said, Desperado is not to be missed. Using intelligence,
romance, and humor--as well as plenty of explosive, surreal
violence--Rodriguez again showcases the timeless struggle between
the forces of darkness and light. And, in the process, he's recasting
the mold for the contemporary action hero--kids now argue about who
gets to play the Mexican. --Stephan Magcosta
