I've seen this twice now and I still have no idea what it's about. A President, a General, a Drug lord, a Cop, and ex-Cop, a Johnny Depp, a guitar player who shoots everyone, then 2 more guitar players who shoot everyone and some kind of coup. That's about all I got. From the moment it starts, you get the feeling that writer/director Robert Rodriguez doesn't want the audience to get too worried about following the plot. He just wants you to have a good time. I'm not sure however that he intended his viewers to abandon the plot right away, but that's what I did, and for the rest of the movie I had no idea how any of the characters were related to each other. I also had no idea that Salma Hayek's character (ha! "character" she is basically a skirt and tits, she doesn't even have lines) is only appearing in flashbacks and that she's actually dead and Antonia Banderas is just remembering her. This was lost on me despite watching her death scene repeated over and over in slo-mo.
Now I dug El Mariachi, and its more polished remake-y update-y thing Desperado. But I think Once Upon A Time In Mexico proves that the guitar/gun virtuoso premise is not exactly trilogy material. I'd say that by the time you see a remote-controlled explosive guitar case on wheels, sharks are jumping over themselves.
The best part about this little air-filled puff pastry is Johnny Depp, who essentially plays the part of Johnny Depp, a charmed movie star who gets paid millions of dollars to ham around in left-over wardrobe from Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas. I'm not even one of those weird-o's who kisses the ground Depp walks on either. It's just that Once Upon... is essentially a remake of Desperado, which is essentially a remake of El Mariachi, and just as I realize that I've spent over 10 hours of my precious life watching Antonio Banderas wear leather pants and shoot people with a guitar-gun, Depp appears in a ridiculous getup and says something utterly bizarre and I lose track of this depressing thought.
Anyway, Mickey Rourke sleepwalks through a few scenes carrying his Chihuahua, and Willem Dafoe loads up on bronze tanner to look like a Mexican, so there is some bright spots here and there. But this small amount of good, is balanced out by Enrique Iglesias doing a musical number and a nonsensical parade of plot twists and cheapie-looking action scenes that ape John Woo-style bullet ballets a full 10 years after it was cool.
Basically, by the time it was done, I was fully numb, but Harry was still awake and feeding in my lap so I went ahead and watched the Special Features docs, hosted by Rodriguez himself. And damm if I wasn't totally entertained by them! The first, 10 Minute Film School, has Rodriguez explaining how he shoots movies so quickly and cheaply and while I don't really dig the final products, I was really impressed with his ingenuity, and he comes off as pretty low-key as he shows you all the tricks he employs. He clearly doesn't think he's some kind of genre genius. The next doc is a tour of his movie studio, which is actually his garage and this too was really impressive. Rodriguez is a home-body work-a-holic who saunters out to his garage where he edits his films, writes and records the scores, records foley effects and does sound design and even some special effects work. It was damn cool. He's essentially a movie industry unto himself in the wilds of Austin Texas.
The final doc was 10 Minute Cooking School, where he explains how to cook a traditional Mexican pork dish featured heavily in the film. Fuck me, is there anything this guy can't do? You know besides, stop beating the shit out of dead horses like El Mariachi and Spy Kids?
If you ask me this film has too many Mexicans, end of story.
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