I remember getting this out quite a few years ago, must have been 96' I think, with Rob, Richie and a few other goons. We watched about 5 minutes of it, thought "wow, this is shit" and turned it off, never to be thought of again. 7 years on and what should I find in my friend's DVD collection but a double-pack of El Mariachi and Desperado, just begging to be stolen. Slipping in Desperado for another possible viewing I managed to sit through all 90 minutes of it this time, only stopping to blink increduously from time to time.
It's still shit, quite spectacularly at times. Rodriguez has essentially taken the rules he made with El Mariachi and not changed them one bit, despite the alleged increase in budget and the all-singing all-dancing (not literally) cast. And it doesn't really work. From the first scene onwards, where a confident Buscemi strolls into a Mexican gangster bar and recounts a tale of violence and destruction wrought upon others of their organization, it just doesn't click, feeling both cheap and silly. This works when you're making a movie for a couple of grand, but doesn't when it's millions we're talking about and a nationwide cinema release.
Essentially the movie is a sequel to the events in El Mariachi, where a guitar-playing drifter finds himself mistaken for a professional hitman and pursued all over a small Mexican town by the local ruffians. Surviving just barely, he lives only to seek revenge on the drug kingpin who... well, that would be ruining the first films plot. Which is excellent by the way. In Desperado however the whole thing seems like a slightly flashier version of its predecessor, complete with insane gunfights, odd dialogue and the odd explosion. The plot works almost identically, only on a grander scale, and as such is ludicrous without being charming. The acting is dodgy, the script meandering, the plot revelations bizarre and cliched and the fight scenes a uneasy blend of the fantastic and the stupid. Not one for the cinematically astute. |
