Depp and Banderas, following their entwined storylines, are joined by a gallery of craggy, grizzled faces, including Willem Dafoe as a slimy drug lord, the gravel-voiced Mickey Rourke as his unwilling associate, Pedro Armendariz as the naïve El Presidente, Cheech Marin as an eye-patch wearing thug, and Danny Trejo as a massive, greasy-haired tough. The Mariachi’s associates include Marco Leonardi, who drinks and kills bad guys in slow motion, and Enrique Iglesias, who is not above spoofing his own image by blowing kisses at old ladies. Eva Mendes is also a player, as a chesty Mexican cop and Depp’s former love interest, and the painfully gorgeous Salma Hayek is back as Mrs. El Mariachi. When Salma first appeared, a boy sitting behind me in the theatre exclaimed, with due reverence, “oh my God.” I think that about sums her up. Yeah, she tried to be ugly for “Frida,” but that really is one of those “camel-through-the-eye-of-a-needle” things.
“Once Upon a Time’s” abundant fight sequences are blatantly silly and wonderfully executed, involving acrobatics, corpses flying through the air or skidding across the floor, and tanker trucks popping up just in time for car crashes. Whenever a gun runs out of bullets there’s always another, bigger one lying around, and whenever a motorcycle runs out of gas, there’s a classic convertible just sitting there with keys in the ignition. The movie also features a great, macabre sense of humor when it comes to comically gruesome wounds. Johnny Depp essentially walks off an injury that, for a less bad ass, might involve sissy stuff like trauma, blood loss, or infection.
“Once Upon a Time in Mexico” might be a better overall movie than “Desperado.” Its weakest points are better than the weakest points of “Desperado,” which suffers from having nothing left to do after the 45 minute mark. But “Once Upon a Time” never quite reaches the goofy vigor of “Desperado’s” barroom shoot-out or its macho title sequence. Both movies feature gorgeous Spanish, Mexican, and Tejano melodies, but I missed “Desperado’s” use of Los Lobos and Tito & Tarantula (although El Mariachi’s cell phone theme is straight from “Desperado’s” title sequence). In that movie, one song went with one scene, making perfect musical queues. “Once Upon a Time,” admirably scored by Rodriguez himself, is a non-stop stream of overlapping themes and melodies, guitar, strings, horn, endlessly connecting one scene to the next, and forgettable when compared to “Desperado.”
Like my two favorite movies from last year, “The Fast Runner” and “Russian Ark,” “Once Upon a Time in Mexico” is shot entirely on high-definition digital video instead of traditional film. Hmm. I liked the movie, but I would have liked it more the old fashioned way. Here, backgrounds are alternately flat, blurry, or look like some sort of computer effect is about to take place, even when one isn’t. Shadows are especially lousy. My eyes hurt by the time the credits rolled. Maybe the projectionist didn’t have his head in the game that night, but I’ve seen celluloid films out-of-focus—“Phone Booth,” “Identity,” and bits of “The Dancer Upstairs” were not shining hours for their particular projectionists—and the old way still looks better.
There’s a line in Woody Allen’s “Hollywood Ending” implying that a movie’s theatrical run is rapidly becoming no more than a glorified advertising campaign for home video. Because they were shot on video and not film, “Once Upon a Time in Mexico” and “Attack of the Clones” will actually look better on DVD than they did in the average movie theatre, barring a handful of digital light projection theatres. If the end product is DVD or the internet, then digital video makes financial sense for moviemakers. And, as a nation of whiners who hate getting in a car and going somewhere when they could just stay at home, things don’t look good for us old-fashioned film lovers.
Finished October 5th, 2003
Copyright © 2003 Friday & Saturday Night
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