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DVD Once Upon a Time in Mexico / Desperado
Once Upon a Time in Mexico Guns, guns, guns! And a few explosions as bodies fly through the air and crash into tables and fruit stands. Once Upon a Time in Mexico, like all Robert Rodriguez movies, is all about the kinetic kick of high-velocity action. Johnny Depp, blase and whimsical, plays a CIA agent who's drawn guitar-playing gun-slinger Antonio Banderas (long black hair flopping over his face like the ears of a Labrador puppy) into a ridiculously convoluted plot to overthrow the Mexican government. Along for the ride are a craggy-faced rogue's gallery including Willem Dafoe, Mickey Rourke, Danny Trejo, Ruben Blades, and (to balance things out) the smooth, tantalizing complexions of Eva Mendes and Salma Hayek. For sheer trashy fun, Once Upon a Time in Mexico is a step down from its predecessor, Desperado--but Desperado set the bar pretty high. For coherent storytelling, look elsewhere, but for action razzle-dazzle, this is your movie. --Bret Fetzer
Desperado It's Sergio Leone meets Sam Peckinpah meets Quentin Tarantino in this ultraviolent, mythological shoot-'em-up by auteur Robert Rodriguez. In Desperado, Rodriguez creates larger-than-life, genre-tweaking stock characters and puts them through their paces. As they stride bravely through an Old West lightly dusted with camp humor, they're periodically called upon to nimbly dodge bullets and fireballs through outrageously choreographed displays of Hollywood pyrotechnics. In this bigger-budget semi-remake/semi-sequel to Rodriguez's indie sensation, El Mariachi (made, famously, for $7,000), Antonio Banderas is the darkly charismatic El Mariachi, the Mysterious Stranger in town; Steve Buscemi is perfectly cast as his weasely, motor-mouth Comic Sidekick, laying the groundwork for El Mariachi's entrance by spinning saloon stories to build up his legend; Cheech Marin is a standout as the Bartender, who really knows how to handle a toothpick; and gorgeous Salma Hayek is, well, the Girl--treated to the kind of full-blown, slow-mo introduction the movies traditionally lavish on beautiful new stars. It doesn't add up to much, but it's a kick. Be careful not to blow out your speakers with the DVD's Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. --Jim Emerson
Review(s): DVD Once Upon a Time in Mexico / Desperado
Don't forget the first one to...
Both of these movies are amazing, though I was all too happy that I was able to see El Mariachi before either of them. The first movie was done almost entirely volunteer with a budget that barely covered the cost of the ammunition -- and yes, at that shockingly low price-tag -- it was that good that it rated two sequels!
Lots of southwest machismo flavor, guns, musicians, tragic love, what more could one want from a movie aiming for the top of the genre.
Desperado first disjointedly continues from El Mariachi (believe me, if you saw E.M. first, you would have at least a few confused moments when viewing Desperado the first time). Once Upon a Time in Mexico picks up from where Desperado left off and the flash backs throughout the third movie do a reasonable job and tying the series together. The plots for all three are fantastical and legend, but all three movies work the genre style for all they are worth and end up way way way on top. Did I mention the astounding cast? It's not just the stars -- they've pulled out some pretty legendary supporting actors to boot.
Five stars for the fact that in addition to being astoundingly fabulous movies -- each one of the three is able to stand as a solid movie unto itself without the other two. Four stars for the set -- only because the set doesn't include El Mariachi, which I think everyone should watch at least a few times. I think it is about time that El Mariachi garners due royalties along with its American companion sequels...
Great action film with a bit of humor.
How could anyone not love this film? It's got more of the wonderful action we saw in Desperado and the same great humor. Depp was amazing. Who couldn't appreciate the humor of him wearing the CIA shirt out in public or the little lines like "Are you a Mexi-Can or a Mexi-Can't?" As for those who say it's "Unbelievable" It's fiction...It's supposed to dance on the edge of unbelievable...else it wouldn't be fiction. The only beef I have with thte film is the repeat of the "you killed my woman, prepare to die" idea. Great film though, well worth your time...try to see Desperado first though.
GAWD AWFUL
OMG it was SO disjointed and over the top ridiculous!!! e.g., one scene (the typical running away from bad guys, shoot-outs galore, etc.,) Bandaras is up a flight of stairs, he puts his guitar case down and stands on it and surfs down the stairs to hit a guy and lands right under him with a gun pointing up at the guy's maracas...*rolling eyes* A#1 and first and foremost, a guitar case like that made for acoustic guitars would not support a child's weight, let alone a grown man and watching him stair-surf was just laugh out loud funny at a moment that was supposed to be serious...another scene a guy's guitar shoots flames out of the end of it then immediately after his friend puts his guitar case down,it sprouts wheels and he pulls out a remote control (like those little cars at radio shack?) and it rolls under a jeep and he pushes a button and it blows it up...GODZ OKAY!!!
Johnny Depp is supp to have his eyes gouged out at one point and the blood on his face is so perfectly painted it looks like THE CROW makeup or something, it also looks purple not red...the writing is just horrid beyond the realms of madness, I've never seen anyting so bad. They had like 8 plots going on at once, dream sequences that you didn't know if they were dreams or what was happening, if someone got shot they flew thru the air backwards about 100 feet in the air (this happened over and over and over and over ad nauseum...). Bandaras didn't seem righteously PO'd, etc., etc.,
Man, it was SO unbelievably bad...
There were also 2 characters that were were killed in Desperado that showed back up (the bartender-Cheech Marin, and the really bad-ass guy w/blades, no explanation of how and why they rose from the dead..Wm DaFoe as a Mexican (if you can envision the blatant miscasting of that one), and Mickey Rourke as some guy we could never figure out who exactly he was supp to be or what his purpose was really toting a little Chihuahua thru the entire movie...
SAVE...YOUR...MONEY...it gets one star for Rodriquez's amazing ability to take a small budget and film breathtaking action scenes--mostly by his own hard work and inovation and workaholic nature, but IMHO when the action scenes are more important than writing a plot that's not a convolted mess, wow okay, what a waste of time and money.
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