The Mexican ** (2001, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, James Gandolfini) – Classic Movie Review 1783

Director Gore Verbinski’s intriguing but all too moderate 2001 thriller stars Brad Pitt as hapless, clumsy small-time crook Jerry Welbach, who is forced by his mob boss to retrieve a priceless pistol called The Mexican back from across the border to pay off his debts and avoid a death threat.

Julia Roberts co-stars with Pitt as his girlfriend Samantha, who tries to make him go on the straight and narrow by telling him that if he takes the job she will leave him and move to Las Vegas without him. James Gandolfini also co-stars, but very uncomfortably, as Leroy, the sensitive, gay hitman with a dangerous secret who saves and kidnaps Samantha.

The Mexican is supposedly believed to carry a curse. That proves very possible when the man Pitt gets it from in Mexico is accidentally killed by a stray bullet fired during a Mexican celebration, and then his car is stolen along with the gun.

These three clever performers are far from at their best in this chaotic, flailing crime comedy thriller, an offbeat, wryly humorous tale of double-cross and murder. Though, of the trio, Pitt easily comes off best.

At 123 minutes, the movie is horribly long, rambling and unfocused, as well as uncomfortable to watch. Pitt and Roberts are kept apart for most of the movie just when you are hoping for a scintillating star pairing. And Gandolfini is shaky in a part that is a million miles away in the wrong direction from his hit role as mobster Tony in The Sopranos. J K Simmons, Bob Balaban, Sherman Augustus and Gene Hackman fill out some of the empty spaces in J H Wyman’s screenplay, which has to take a lot of the blame here.

For his role here, Gandolfini lost 35lb, which he had to gain back before shooting The Sopranos.  He died of a heart attack on June 19 2013, aged 51.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1783 

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