'Once Upon a Time in Mexico' Movie Review (2003)
In Mexico you can be blind, literally, and still hit your mark. In a gun fight you should also look out for your enemy's guitar case, it could either be a flame thrower or even a remote control bomb.
In Once Upon a Time in Mexico you can expect all that plus plenty of explosions and gun fights and everything above as Antonio Banderas revives El Mariachi as he is the focal point of his third movie.
That's right Once Upon a Time in Mexico is the third movie in Robert Rodriguez's own little trilogy and the best of the three.
El Mariachi (1993) earned Rodriguez $7,000 and is not very well known, but in 1995 Banderas took the reigns of El Mariachi in Desperado. There is one difference between these movies and most sequels, they can be watched independently and Once Upon a Time in Mexico is no exception.
This time around El Mariachi (Banderas) is forced out of hiding by Sands (Depp), a corrupt CIA agent, hell bent on using El to sabotage an assassination attempt on the president of Mexico. The assassination has been masterminded by an evil cartel kingpin Barillo (Dafoe), and throughout you never really know who is on what side of the law.
Filled with action, explosions, and gun fights Once Upon a Time in Mexico is cinema fun as long as you don't take it too seriously.
The true redeeming value of this flick is Johnny Depp and without him it would be a waste of time and money.
Depp's cool factor and his subtle comedy adds so much to this movie that it overshadows everyone else just as it did in the summer blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean, too bad the rest of the cast can't live up to his abilities.
Salma Hayek's character is pushed to the background except for the five minutes of eye candy she offers up. Dafoe tries, but he can't pull off the role of a Mexican cartel leader any more than could one of the Olsen twins. And the soft spoken Banderas has seemed to lose his luster from his early days and cannot carry a movie, if he ever could.
Overall, Once Upon a Time in Mexico is comparable to this summer's Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, without all the ladies. It is fun to watch but if you take it too seriously you are going to be sorely disappointed.
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