The Piece of Good Pork (Once Upon a Time in Mexico (DVD))

Member Name: andrewl

Product:	Once Upon a Time in Mexico (DVD)
Date:	16/07/09 (55 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Amazing finale to a legendary cult trilogy

Disadvantages: Occasionally a wee bit confusing

I've always loved Rodriguez's work, up to and including the gloriously nutty and under-rated 'Spy Kids' trilogy. However, to be honest, I was secretly longing for that brilliant chapter to close after the director appeared on The Big Breakfast to promote one of the films and hinted that a third Mariachi film might be on the cards, and I've been waiting patiently ever since.

So, the trilogy that began ten years previously with the shoestring 'El Mariachi' finally draws to a close. As with the Terminator series there has been a sense that each installment has been more of a remake than a sequel, updated each time to make the most of whatever money or neat technology the famously thrifty director has managed to get his hands on, and with various bits of backstory altered for the sake of the new plot. The iconic image of the guitar case stuffed with weaponry is almost the only constant. First we had the sensitive musician forced to take up a gun in self-defence after a case of mistaken identity. Then Banderas took over in 'Desperado' as an almost animalistic drug dealer's nemesis. He occasionally said something like, 'phew, my hand hurts' to get out of playing the guitar and had a neat line in flamenco gunfighting.

Now, 'Once Upon a Time in Mexico' updates the saga once more. The hand injury has gone, and the Mariachi has instead become an outcast, hiding away and grieving the loss of his wife and daughter. So playing guitar on the church roof for a hobby might not seem like lying low to you, but this is Mexico, and that's another country.

Oh, there is a plot somewhere. Someone wants to assassinate Mexico's President over his tough stance on drug cartels. But the exact relationship between the drug baron (Willem Dafoe) and the wacky General is never made entirely clear, and it's all complicated by the uncertain motives of CIA agent George Sands (Johnny Depp steals the show rather magnificently in this glorious part, wearing t-shirts emblazoned with 'CIA Agent' and generally sneering at Mexicans). El Mariachi is brought out of retirement in order to kill the general, with whom he has an old score to settle.

All of which is fine. But Rodriguez also introduces about a dozen more figures with hidden agendas and scores to settle. A cynical chap might suggest that this is just to accommodate his ever-increasing roll-call of celebrity mates that have to crop up in his every film. But the effect of all these conflicting motivations and tortuous backstories is that by the time the film enters its blood-soaked third reel, you've stopped caring who's on which side and can just sit back and enjoy the action.

On the performance front, Depp is a revelation as Sands. From the already much-quoted line: 'Are you a Mexican or a Mexi-can't?' to the hysterically distasteful blind gunfights ('my right or your right?'), this slick character is a million miles away from the swaggering mockney drunkard of 'Pirates of the Carribean'.

Salma Hayek's character has had something of a facelift, apparently turning into a gun-toting, knife-throwing expert. The years since Desperado have been kinder to her than they have been to Banderas. She looks great, acts her part fantastically, and it's a great shame she doesn't have a bigger part. Still, she does get to recreate 'El Mariachi's' set-piece bus stunt with Banderas, so that's OK.

Banderas is also brilliant, presenting a much more introspective Mariachi for this outing. He's recovered his ability to play the guitar, it seems, as well as some shiny accessories on his funky scorpion emblazoned jacket. He isn't actually in the film as much as you might think, though, which is a bit of a shame. But this is easily his best performance since 'Desperado' (although given that his only other two notable turns have been Evita and Zorro...) and with Depp proving himself more than capable of supporting the film, it does give 'Once Upon a Time in Mexico' a much more ensemble feel, which is always nice.

This really is the closest Rodriguez has come to making 'The Good, the bad and the ugly'. While no one is exactly 'good', El Mariachi has essentially honourable motives, Sands is fantastically corrupt and Danny Trejo is definitely ugly.

However, the film also steers the series away from the Western and towards a true Mexican tone. The Day of the Dead is featured heavily towards the conclusion, and the landscape is filmed with a great deal more attention than in Rodriguez's earlier work. Mexico's European heritage is also heavily represented as various nasty scenes involving eyeballs hark back directly to Dali and Bunuel's icky surrealist masterpiece 'Un Chien Andalou'. I'm not quite sure about the significance of naming a scheming CIA agent after a nineteenth century female French poet, but then we can't all be Robert Rodriguez, at the end of the day.

And all this is basically a good thing because, let's face facts, Westerns are rubbish. Founded at best on historical revisionism, and more often on racism and dubious right-wing politics, they are a long outdated form of cinema. 'Once Upon a Time in Mexico' is a much more subversive piece of work, showing how individuals become corrupted by self-interest. Artists are the only pure souls in Rodriguez's cinematic world, and an appreciation of music is the only thing that will save you from a messy squib death. As soon as drug lord Barillo has his piano teacher executed, the audience knows there is no hope for him. Banderas's band of gun-toting guitarists may be after a fat wadge of cash for their work, but they make it clear they are also fighting for the State, and for the People. I never thought I'd see a socialist Western, but this is the closest we're ever going to get.

What with all the politics going on, I worried for a little while that there was going to be little time for the shooting. I was wrong. A couple of the action scenes appear to be tacked on somewhat, specifically when Antonio cuts loose in a market for a few minutes, but they are handled with magnificent flair and panache, and lashings of fake blood. So much blood, in fact, it even gets on the camera lens at one point, which was utterly cool.

As the shootouts gather pace, even Enrique Iglesias turns up and is intensely irritating by virtue of being surprisingly good in his admittedly limited role. The trademark streetwise kid forms a touching relationship with Depp in these final scenes and there is still a lot of humour present. Not just in the dialogue, the funky guitar cases from Desperado are still hanging around. Flame-throwing guitar cases, mobile bomb guitar cases, and even the sublime moment where the film flips a cheeky mid-digit at Peter Jackson's Tolkien adaptation and sends Antonio Banderas stair-surfing on his trusty guitar case.

This is an action film with real brains, humour, style and even loads of really nice music. Rodriguez has developed dramatically as a film-maker while making this trilogy, yet clearly retains the love of cinema that inspired the series in the first place. The cheeky credits: 'A flick by Robert Rodriguez' and 'Shot, chopped and scored by Robert Rodriguez' are nicely irreverent, and show a man clearly determined not to become self-important under the burden of all the many filming duties he imposes upon himself to keep costs down.

This is one of the most purely enjoyable films I've seen for a very long time. I would recommend it to everyone without hesitation, although be aware that it is fantastically, horrifically violent. Why this should get away with a 15 rating, when the comparatively tame Desperado was lumbered with an 18 is beyond me.

Summary: Blind gunfighters and guitarist gunfighters and bullfighters. Yay!