More often than not, Robert Rodriguez, the multi-tasking guerrilla action auteur who gained fame, notoriety and studio backing after spending $7,000 and making a hit out of El Mariachi (1992), seems content to drift along, spinning his filmmaking wheels. His career at this point seems to have evolved into a two-pronged concurrent of his money-printing Spy Kids series and his south-of-the-border shoot-’em-up extravaganzas, the latest of which arrives with the Leone-y title Once Upon a Time in Mexico.
Whereas Rodriguez’s 1995 Desperado was more or less a glossier El Mariachi remake (Guy Ritchie tried this gambit a few years later and was cut a surprising amount of critical slack when he remade Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and called it Snatch), Once Upon a Time in Mexico gooses the general formula with bigger names, a gnarlier plot and even more over-the-top action theatrics.
Antonio Banderas anchors the action again, returning from Desperado as the mariachi-of-few-words-with-an-itchy-trigger-finger. In this go-round, the man with the deadly guitar case agrees to help a CIA agent (Johnny Depp) foil an evil general’s plot to overthrow El Presidente. In the interest of laying the groundwork for a climax in which everyone wants to kill everyone else, Rodriguez throws in a sexy female CIA spook (Eva Mendes), a retired FBI agent (Ruben Blades) with an ax to grind and, best of all, Willem Dafoe as a Mexican drug kingpin (!) and Mickey Rourke (!!) as his embittered right hand. Just when you think the stunt casting can’t get any more outrageous, Enrique Iglesias (!!!) shows up as another heat-packin’ mariachi. (Second-billed Salma Hayek, sadly, has been given nothing more than a couple of brief flashback scenes.)
Scores are settled, allegiances are reversed, eyes are gouged and faces are disfigured as the hyperactive drama races to a resolution. The movie is as showboatingly outrageous as anything Rodriguez has done, and Depp’s off-the-wall performance typifies the atmosphere of merry mayhem. Depp shot this before Pirates of the Caribbean, but he appears to have been prepping for his grandiose turn in that summer blockbuster with the effete attitude he affects here. Whether dropping har-dee-har one-liners (‘Are you a Mexican or a Mexi can’t?’) or quietly assessing the logistics of participating in a gunfight when you can’t see, Depp drolly takes every opportunity to remind us that it’s just a movie, folks.
It’s a movie made with obvious fire and gusto by Rodriguez (who is listed in the credits as having ‘shot, chopped and scored’ the thing, as well as having written and directed), but in the service of what? Rodriguez whips out his digital video camera for the more chaotic action sequences, capturing some fitfully electric moments, but with all the effort on display, it’s still awfully hard to convince us that we’re seeing anything we haven’t sat through dozens of times before. I’m all for catering to audience’s basest, most bloodthirsty instincts (it’s certainly not Rodriguez’s fault that one young man sitting near me at the screening felt the need to shout ‘Whore!’ every time Mendes appeared onscreen), but unless something’s honestly at stake, shoot-outs and bloodshed inevitably lead to repetitive torpor.