Posted on 09/29/2003 10:12:07 AM PDT by PJ-Comix
Once upon a time in Hollywood they made movies with plots.
Once upon a time in Hollywood they made movies with screenplays.
Once upon a time in Hollywood the producers were able to put a lid on mental case directors who threatened to make movies that made almost no sense.
Unfortunately, today in Hollywood all of these transgressions take place with increasing frequency. A previous example of such a senseless movie was The Matrix Reloaded which is now rivaled in senselessness by Once Upon A Time In Mexico.
Excuse me. Did I refer to Once Upon A Time In Mexico as a movie? A more accurate description of that production would be "video game." With its almost nonstop gunplay and explosions, Once Upon A Time In Mexico has about the same artistic depth as an electronic action game at your local video arcade. At least the video games are interactive so you could participate in the action. With Once Upon A Time In Mexico, director Robert Rodriguez holds you hostage as he subjects the audience to an endless array of deadly dull mental torture. Read this to get a brief taste of the movie story line:
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! RATTA-TAT-TAT! BLAST! SPLATTER! BOOM! BOOM! (Meaningless dialogue.) POP! POP! POP! CRASH! SLAM! BLAM!
Now multiply this over and over again until it stretches out for over two hours and you will have a pretty good idea of what Once Upon A Time In Mexico is like.
Speaking of torture, Robert Rodriguez considers it some sort of joke. Remember the DEA agent, Enrique Camarena who was captured by Mexican drug dealers and tortured by having his eyes gouged out? Rodriguez obviously looked upon this as a source of comedy material since he has CIA agent Sands (Johnny Depp) taken captive by narcotraficantes who proceed to gouge his eyes out. Sands then keeps his cool and uses his blindness as a source of all sorts of comedy shtick. Oh, you're just too funny, Rodriguez! Why not do some concentration camp humor by showing a bunch of Mexican campesinos walking into a shower room to clean off? Then, much to their surprise, instead of water coming out of the showerheads, Zyklon B fills the room. HA! HA! HA! Isn't that just a laugh riot, Rodriguez?
Oh, and don't feel too sorry for CIA agent Sands. It turns out he was just a wise ass scumbag. For example, Sands was on a mission (in addition to his official CIA mission of replacing the president of Mexico) to find the best fried pork in the country. When he finally discovers which restaurant serves up the most delectable pork, he rewards the chef by shooting him dead in order to keep things in "balance" as he idiotically put it. Somehow this is Rodriguez's idea of a humor twist. Instead of congratulating the chef, Sands shoots him dead. HA! HA! HA! Oh, you're too funny, Rodriguez!
In another restaurant scene a waitress spills a drink on Sands' table. Don't worry. This time Sands doesn't kill her. Instead he shoots Cheech Marin, his table guest, in the head. Another example of the Rodriguez "humor."
Antonio Banderas as El Mariachi stars in this overproduced video game while giving a vague sleepwalking impression of Clint Eastwood. I can't say that Banderas did any acting since other than mouthing a few meaningless lines, his finger was constantly on a trigger gunning down an endless array of villains. I almost expected to see video game points light up on the side of the screen during the contant pyrotechnics.
Speaking of Clint Eastwood, Rodriguez tried to use elements of Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns in Once Upon A Time In Mexico. He also tried to conjure up cinematic bits from A Clockwork Orange, Monty Python, The Wild Bunch, John Woo films, and even Diego Rivera imagery. None of it worked and all came off as being merely pathetic attempts to toss everything at the screen and hoping that something sticks. Actually one thing Rodriguez tried did work. It was when Sands the CIA agent showed up at a bullfight ring wearing a CIA T-shirt that said "Central Intelligence Agency" underneath the "CIA" abbreviation. True, it was a ripoff of The Simpsons episode where Homer Simpson, hiding out in the Witness Protection Program, walked around in a "Witness Protection Program" T-shirt. However, since I did get a chuckle from that stolen scene I'll give Rodriguez credit for a good steal that very briefly lifted me out of the mind numbing daze caused by the rest of the movie.
Once Upon A Time In Mexico is supposed to be the third movie in a trilogy of Robert Rodriguez movies. The first two were El Mariachi and Desperado. Desperado was a big budget remake of the shoestring budget El Mariachi. Rodriguez only spent about $7000 to make El Mariachi (a much better flick than his current effort) and raised the money by allowing himself to be used as a human guinea pig for drug studies. With Once Upon A Time In Mexico we can see the horrible things drugs can do to a mind. Besides the permanent loss of sanity and rationality, the drugs also caused hyperinflation of the director's ego to the point where he thought he could actually make a viewable movie without a plot or plausible story line.
Yes, somewhere in this movie there was a vague hint of a plot involving a CIA agent plotting to have the president of Mexico assassinated by a rogue general who would in turn be killed by El Mariachi. Why this needs to be done is anybody's guess. A bigshot drug lord, Barillo (Willem Dafoe) is also mixed up in this non-plot for no real reason except to gross us out by having his face surgically carved off. Even more gross than Johnny Depp's gouged out eyeballs or Willem Dafoe's carved off face is Mickey Rourke's real face. What the hell happened to him? The wasteland that was once Rourke's face is more horrible than all the other grotesque sights of this movie put together.
So inundated are we by the interminable violence and gore of Once Upon A Time In Mexico that we don't even care when El Mariachi's wife (Salma Hayek) and child are killed in a flashback scene. Maybe in Desperado that scene (sorry, no nekkid Salma Hayek breast shots) caused the audience to grieve but in Rodriguez's latest disaster, our minds have become so numbed that we barely notice that a couple more people among dozens of others have been blasted away.
Speaking of blasts, why did Rodriguez decide to skimp on producing his explosions? Those lame CGI blasts were the phoniest looking special effects since a burning paper plate was hurled through the air to depict a flaming flying saucer in Plan Nine From Outer Space.
The horrible CGI explosion effects of Once Upon A Time In Mexico was matched by the completely unconvincing acting of Enrique Iglesias as a fellow mariachi player to Banderas. Iglesias didn't so much act as just take up space on the screen. Therefore I am pleading to the Directors Guild to make a special rule to never again allow Enrique Iglesias to appear in a movie. His deadening presence on the screen sucks all life out of any scene he is in.
My advice to everybody is to avoid Once Upon A Time In Mexico like the plague. If you really must see all that gunplay, just wait for the video game version to appear. At least that way you can get a chance to blast Enrique Iglesias away with a joystick. Therefore, on my Chad Rating Scale of one to ten chads, with ten chads being best, I am giving Once Upon A Time In Mexico a lousy one chad rating. It really deserves zero chads like I gave to The Matrix Reloaded but since I got one brief chuckle based on a bit Robert Rodriguez stole from The Simpsons I'll toss an undeserved chad at this flick.
This is the NEW Al Gore keepin' it real with this review and warning people away from anything that promotes gratuitous violence. No, I'm not blaming Robert Rodriguez and all the other Hollywood film makers who fill their movies chock full of blasting guns and meaningless violence. After all, I might need them again for contributions should I decide to return to the campaign trail. Instead I am placing the blame squarely on right-wing firearm owners who are secretly promoting irresponsible gunplay under the guise of gun safety courses.
Salma Hayek, arguable, the most beautiful woman on the planet, spoke about a dozen words, mostly in Spanish. Johnny Depp, who stole this movie too, couldn't help without a plot.
The movie was crap!
He admits Hollywood is promulgating flicks full of violence but he is blaming all the violence in society on "right-wing firearm owners." See below.
No, I'm not blaming Robert Rodriguez and all the other Hollywood film makers who fill their movies chock full of blasting guns and meaningless violence. After all, I might need them again for contributions should I decide to return to the campaign trail. Instead I am placing the blame squarely on right-wing firearm owners who are secretly promoting irresponsible gunplay under the guise of gun safety courses.
True but did you see Once Upon A Time In Mexico?
Not unless your Chick gets hot out of seeing some guy getting his eyes gouged out.
Check it out. Maybe they should keep Rodriguez on a shoestring budget.
Sometimes small budgets force directors to be creative.
Who's unsuspecting??? I think most people know what a movie preview is. If someone went into the theater thinking that the billboard with the guy packing the hand cannon was actually advertising for a musical, I think they've got serious issues.
The t-shirts Sands/Depp wears were a riot. The other nice one was "I'm With Stupid" with a big arrow pointing down to his groin.
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