2003, United States/England. Starring Antonio Banderas, Johnny Depp, Selma Hayek, Willem Dafoe, Eva Mendes, Micky Rourke, Cheech Marin, Ruben Blades, Danny Trejo. Directed by Robert Rodriguez. Available on DVD from Amazon

Well, if Scream and Scream Again seemed not to make much sense until the very end, and even then only tenuously, here's a movie that fails to make sense from opening to closing credits. Robert Rodriguez' third film in his Mariachi trilogy has the feel of a half-baked concept that was scripted out on a series of dinner napkins on the way to the first day of shooting, and even then half the napkins must have blown out the window. El Mariachi was quite an enjoyable little film that relied on wit and comedy to carry an otherwise heavy story about a mariachi who is mistaken for an assassin who carries the tools of his trade in a guitar case.

The bigger-budget follow-up (but at just around $3 million, still miniscule in comparison to the $100 million or more behemoths that were emerging during the 1990s) to the micro-budget sleeper hit was Desperado, replacing star Carlos Gallardo with bigger star Antonio Banderas, then adding bombshell Selma Hayek to the equation along with bigger explosions, bigger arsenals, bigger shoot-outs, and even goofier comedy. Although overblown and perhaps too big budget for its own good, Desperado managed never the less to emerge as an entertaining actioner with more sex appeal and wit than just about any other film in the genre at the time.

Which brings us, some eight or nine years later, to the third film. By this point, Rodriguez is not the scrappy young underdog he once was. Though still fiercely independent in his demand to write, produce, edit, direct, and sometimes score and do special effects for all his films, the riches of three Spy Kids films have the maverick Mexican director's coffers overflowing with cash. So he decided to take it and make the third mariachi film even bigger than the second, though once again at $30 million amid $200 million globe-busters.

Banderas, sexy as ever, returns once again as the brooding guitar-playing mariachi who decides if he's going to keep getting mistaken for a killer, he might as well become one. But when we meet him here, he has retired and gone into seclusion in a small town with a towering old crumbling church you just know he's going to spend a lot of time posing on top of before he leaves to pursue whatever action will propel the film forward. We learn through a series of flashbacks that his beloved Carolina (Hayek) has born him a lovely daughter, but neither of them is on hand anywhere but in flashbacks, if you get my meaning. As is always the case with legendary gunslingers, the Mariachi is forced back into action once again when screwball CIA agent Sands (Johnny Depp) employs him to stop a renegade general (the same one responsible for the film's low Hayek content) from assassinating the president of Mexico. The plot is simple enough, but there are so many characters and so many odd moments and twists that one can quickly get lost in the labyrinth. Characters and logical plots have never been Rodriguez' strong point, and we see here that they still escape him.

It doesn't really matter, however, because as the title of the film suggests, this is his ode to the westerns of Sergio Leone. After revolutionizing the western with his "Man With No Name" trilogy, Leone went on to direct the colossal Once Upon a Time in the West, a film far more interested in the epic myth of the West and in creating godlike statues out of its characters, turning their every appearance into formations as grand as the Monument Valley locations that served as the film's backdrop. Leone was unconcerned with complex characterization or well-sketched story. His characters were Greek gods, archetypes, symbols more than they were humans, and the story was only a skeleton upon which he could hang this grand visual epic. Likewise, Rodriguez' Once Upon a Time in Mexico is more concerned with bold strokes that subtle lines.

Like Leone's masterpiece, Once Upon a Time in Mexico is littered with character actors doing what they do best: playing characters. Where as Leone had Fonda, Bronson, Robards, Claudia Cardinale, and Ferzetti, Rodriguez has Banderas, Depp, Hayek (sort of), Willem Dafoe, Mickey Rourke, Ruben Blades, Eva Mendes, and perhaps my favorite modern character actor of all time, Danny Trejo - also known as the version of Edward James Olmos who looks like he could kick the ass of pretty much anyone in the world. Cheech Marin and Enrique Eglesias round out the cast of very familiar faces playing types rather than actual "human" characters. Blades is the depressed, retired FBI agent whose "one big bust" got away from him. Dafoe is the creepy, posh drug baron, while Rourke is his good ol' boy sidekick looking to get out of the life. Mendes is a sexy Mexican cop with a secret, and Johnny Depp is…well, he's Johnny Depp. What more do you want?

Once Upon a Time in Mexico does plenty right, enough to keep me liking the film even when parts of it frustrate or simple lose me altogether. Needless to say, the cast oozes with talent, and putting Depp, Hayek, and Banderas on screen in the same film is just about the sexiest thing any film could ever hope to achieve. Unfortunately, Hayek appears only briefly, but you can't have everything. We men who like to look at the pretty ladies get lots of films to stare at, so it's no shame that an action movies wants to give you a gaggle of hot guys to check out, then puts them all in tight black jeans on the dusty, sun-drenched Mexican landscape. The movie makes plenty of room for hot guys walking in slow motion while carrying guitar cases.

I don't know that I'd call Dafoe or Cheech Marin sexy (though some would disagree with me), but Eglesias we all know, and I've always thought that Reuben Blades was much hotter than anyone seemed to give him credit for. And Eva Mendes? Forget it! She may not be the bombshell that Selma Hayek is, but then who is? As for former sex symbol Mickey Rourke, well I think he's supposed to look weird and disturbing here, which for the best. Both he and Dafoe aren't really given enough to do, but when they are on screen they perform as well as audiences have come to expect from them. I've never been a big Rourke fan, but his turn here, although limited, warmed me to him a little, much in the same way I've warmed to the previously unlikable (to me) Alec Baldwin since he stopped being so serious and started having a little fun as a character actor. Maybe age has something to do with it. Rourke seemed really insufferable as a young, sexy lead. But now that his star has faded, along with some of his looks, and he's put on a few pounds, he seems to be a much better actor.

The film, not just because of the cast, is gorgeous. Super-saturated with the vibrant reds, yellows, greens, and blues of Mexico, Once Upon a Time in Mexico definitely stands out in a time when people still seem addicted to tinting all their action films blue or brown and draining them almost entirely of any sense of color or visual energy. No more gray-blue or green-yellow films! Rodriguez knows that Mexico is a colorful country, and that the color lends his film strength. To mute it would be like making a dreary monotone-colored film about India. The entire film was shot digital, and if nothing else it's a valuable promo reel for the advances in digital film technology. Where previous directors working in the digital realm relied on an overly "computerized" look, like in those crummy new Star Wars films that have lots of color but still reek of artificiality and drabness, Rodriguez is able to make the medium seem warm and human and, if not as cozy as traditional celluloid, at least close.

For a movie that has ten times the budget of the action-packed second film, Once Upon a Time in Mexico is surprisingly low on the action quotient, though when the action does kick in, it's suitably wild and corny. The best scene, besides the repeat of the "what do these guitar cases shoot" joke from Desperado (it was funny then and is still funny now), involves a flashback in which Banderas and Hayek escape from a gang of pursuers while chained together and swinging one another up and down a wall as they repel out a window. The finale, in which a coup attempt takes place during the Day of the Dead festival, is as fantastic as it sounds, especially when Depp shows up in a strange sparkling black vest. Banderas almost seems lost amid so many characters, but he still shines when he gets the chance.

It probably won't surprise anyone to hear that Johnny Depp is the most memorable thing about the movie. His character continues his streak of playing completely off-kilter anti-heroes, this time a murderous CIA agent who is as evil as he is heroic, and who also has strange taste in disguises - my favorite being the one where he wears shorts, a fanny pack, and one of those baggy t-shirts that says "CIA" on the front. Rodriguez seems to have pretty much let Depp show up on location and do whatever the hell he wanted, which seems a pretty sound strategy these days. Depp crawls into a quirky character like no one else can, and 2003 was a particularly strong year for him with this and Pirates of the Caribbean. It's one thing to play a quirky character. There are tons of those. Every movie tries to have one, and most of them aren't half as interesting as they hope. It's quite another thing to play a quirky character uniquely, not to mention fabulously, and that's what Depp can do. He thinks of things to do with a character that wouldn't have occurred to anyone else, except maybe Jack Nicholson before he simply started appearing in every film as Jack Nicholson.

Although the script is complete chaos, it's still an admirable attempt to inject some brains into an increasingly brain-dead genre. Action films haven't exactly been firing up the sinews lately, and while Once Upon a Time in Mexico isn't a work of genius, it still manages to have something to say, however muddled that something may be. Themes of loss and redemption, common in action films, actually have some weight and meaning, partially because although broadly drawn, Banderas is such a charismatic actor. Like Russell Crowe without the blazing real-life obnoxiousness and chubbiness. The film's political messages are equally broad, but that there is anything political at all is worth cheering for, especially if it ends up with a well-armed Banderas in the ceremonial coat of the president of Mexico. As far as "visual feasts" go, Once Upon a Time in Mexico is one of the films that falls into such a category while still having something a little more going on than pretty pictures.

The film's biggest drawback is that, while each individual piece is glorious, they are never assembled into the masterpiece they should be. Although patterned in the spirit of Once Upon a Time in the West, this is not the "mythic epic" that film became. Although individual sequences could be called grand, Rodriguez fails to assemble them into the film they deserve. As such, Once Upon a Time in Mexico feels much smaller and more low-key than it should, a feeling that isn't helped by the uneven pacing that plagues the movie. Parts of the film really seem to stumble, and from time to time it seems as if Rodriguez is aware of this fault and so trots Johnny Depp out again to liven things up. Whenever Depp is on screen, the scene can't help but crackle with his bizarre charm. Banderas should be more engaging here than he is. Although plenty likable, he tends, as I said, to become lost amid the various players and conspiracies swirling about him. It's by no fault of Banderas'. The script simply short-changes him in favor of the more outlandish Depp. I'm as impressed as anyone by Rodriguez' one-man-band approach to film-making and his ongoing proof-by-example that one need not have the crew of thousands to make a movie. Sometimes, though, it seems like maybe he needs to step down and ask for a little assistance with putting his sundry cool scenes together into, if not a cohesive or logical film, at least one that is as cool in its entirety as it is in its pieces.

Once you have the basics of the plots sorted out and know who's who, it's best to simply let it all flow over you. Rodriguez makes movies because he loves making movies. He loves everything about it, as evidenced by the fact that he tries to do everything behind the scenes. And what ultimately saves Once Upon a Time in Mexico from being a disaster is the sheer exuberance on display. Every frame is filled with the joy of filmmaking. Robert Rodriguez has fun, and he manages to translate that onto screen even if his film has a lot of bumps. They're the sort of faults that result from a guy being too genuinely excited about what he's doing, and I can forgive those even as I point them out and even as they move the film from "must see" to "see if it it's around.".

Once Upon a Time in Mexico pays tribute to old spaghetti westerns and Hong Kong action films without ever seeming to be a retread, and without ever resorting to the self-referential irony that has become the bane of my existence. Ultimately, this means that despite a cluttered and half-conceived script and despite the grim back story, Once Upon a Time in Mexico is something of a celebration. It is, in many ways, the Day of the Dead parade we see in the film's own finale. Never perfect, hardly polished, rarely as engaging as it should be, and at times seeming to collapse under its own weight, Once Upon a Time in Mexico is never the less a welcome, clever piece of popcorn entertainment that benefits from the fact that action films have become so awful that even a slapdash one like this that at least attempts to be something different comes across as a little special.

Labels: Action, Netflix Diary, Year: 2003