El Mariachi **** (1992, Carlos Gallardo, Consuelo Gómez, Jaime de Hoyos) – Classic Movie Review 2399

Writer-producer-editor-director-cinematographer Robert Rodriguez’s extremely exciting and dynamic, tongue-in-cheek 1992 action thriller Western is set in a Mexican border town. An ultra-low-budget hit, it turned out to be the first of Rodriguez’s El Mariachi trilogy.

It was enterprisingly made in 14 days in Mexico by its then 24-year-old debut director for just $9,000. He apparently raised the money by hiring out his body to medical science!

Carlos Gallardo stars as El Mariachi, a much put-upon young musician who just wants to play his guitar but is the victim in a case of mistaken identity. He gets involved in a feud when he’s confused with an armed mobster, Azul (Reinol Martinez), who is on the run from prison.

A drug lord and his henchmen mistake El Mariachi for the killer, who carries his guns in a guitar case. While they chase him around town trying to kill him and get his guitar case, El Mariachi holes up with a crime boss’s moll who wants the gangster dead.

Rodriguez’s wacky oddball pastiche Western, with shades of Sam Peckinpah’s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, is continually and unerringly vibrant, entertaining and violent. Its black humour works as well and as stylishly as its flashy visuals.

It is a total tour-de-force of bravura direction and writing and photography by Rodriguez, who re-worked it for a so-called sequel, Desperado, in 1995 with Antonio Banderas, who reprised the role for Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

Also in the cast are Consuelo Gómez, Peter Marquardt and Jaime de Hoyos.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2399

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