Blending comedy, romance, action - adventure and a few suprising thrills, 'The Mexican' is a great movie with likeable good natured characters. Strangly its not the marketers' wet dream combo, Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt that makes it work. As the bickering lovers at the centre of this kidnap-cum-road movie, theyre barley together. And when they are, there bloody annoying. Their breakup scene near the start is strangly lethargic - Pitt all self concious geekiness as he sets off to recover an antique pistol of the title, Roberts all shrill bitchiness. Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn could pull this sort of love-to-hate relationship banter-but then they had better writers. Not that JH script is completly charmless. Sure the story is desperatly convoluted, but shards of wit spike the dialogue, while Pitts adventures south of the boarder provide moments of simple minded hilarity ("i need a lift in your el-trucko to the next towno") Thats not all what makes the mexican tick. Gore Verbinski's hetic genre mishmash work because of one thing: James Gandolfini. As Roberts kiddnapper turned - confident, he's the completly likeable character. Forget the A-list dreamteam, a gay Tony Soprano is worth two hours if anyones time.
Overall a great adventure/comedy with keeps viewers interested and amused all the way through. |
