Motivational Posters
|
Once Upon A Time in Mexico (2003)
|
 Starring: Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Willem Dafoe, Johnny Depp, Ruben Blades, Eva MendesDirected by: Robert Rodriguez
Produced by: Robert Rodriguez, Elizabeth Avellan, Carlos Gallardo
Release Date: September 12, 2003 (Wide)
MPAA Rating: R for strong violence, and for language.
Box Office: $56,820,000 (US total)
Distributor: Columbia Pictures
The saga of the mythic guitar-slinging hero, El Mariachi (Antonio Banderas), continues in Robert Rodriguez's bravura action epic Once Upon a Time in Mexico.
The new adventure is set against a backdrop of revolution, greed and revenge. Haunted and scarred by tragedy, El Mariachi (Banderas) has retreated into a life of isolation. He is forced out of hiding when Sands (Johnny Depp), a corrupt CIA agent, recruits the reclusive hero to sabotage an assassination plot against the president of Mexico, which has been conceived by the evil cartel kingpin Barrillo (Willem Dafoe). But El Mariachi also has his own reasons for returning - blood revenge.
The desperado returns with his two trusted sidekicks Lorenzo (Enrique Iglesias) and Fideo (Marco Leonardi). And the legend of El Mariachi reaches new heights of excitement and adventure.
The Legend Continues
Once Upon a Time in Mexico is the most recent chapter in the legend of `El Mariachi.' Modestly budgeted, shot in Mexico in high-definition video over an attenuated seven-week schedule, it was another opportunity for the talent in front of and behind the camera to work with the talented multi-hyphenate filmmaker Robert Rodriguez, who wrote, directed and produced the film as well as performing the functions of director of photography, production design, editing and music composition.
Once Upon a Time in Mexico is a tribute to the kinds of movies that inspired Rodriguez to become a filmmaker like Sergio Leone's classic “spaghetti” westerns (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, A Fistful of Dollars) and George Miller's classic post-apocalyptic adventure The Road Warrior.
The `El Mariachi' legend has had an interesting and unique history and no one is more surprised at its evolution than Rodriguez himself. The first film, El Mariachi, has an unlikely muse in the `Mad Max' action film The Road Warrior. “Like Road Warrior, I wanted to come up with an idea that was a little off-kilter and kind of fun,” he says. “So I thought of making the hero (El Mariachi) a guitar player with a guitar case full of guns. It was very off the cuff.”
Rodriguez's notable film debut was shot for a mere $7,000 (“or the coffee budget on most movies,” he laughs) and catapulted the young filmmaker to prominence, earning him the audience award at the Sundance Film Festival.
The second film, Desperado, actually began as a bigger-budget remake of the first movie, but grew into a sequel of sorts, incorporating more elaborate action sequences than Rodriguez had been able to execute in El Mariachi, and making international stars of its two leads Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek.
Even as he was shooting Desperado, friends began telling him he needed to make a third film in the series. “The true story is that Quentin Tarantino showed up on the set of Desperado one day and said `This is your `Dollars' trilogy.' And I said, `What are you talking about?'” The cinephile Tarantino was referring to the Italian director Sergio Leone's trio of westerns - A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and The Ugly, also known as the `Man With No Name' trilogy, since the hero in all three films, played by Clint Eastwood, is never identified by name. “'Mariachi is your Fistful of Dollars, Tarantino said, and Desperado will be your For a Few Dollars More. But then you'll have to make the epic. And you'll have to call it Once Upon a Time in Mexico.'”
“And I said to Quentin, let's just finish this movie and I'll think about it,” Rodriguez recalls. “Years later Amy Pascal from Columbia Pictures called saying that Desperado had gained cult status among action fans, and that a sequel was in order. I remembered what Quentin had said, and told her, “Okay, I'll do one but it can't just be Desperado 2, it would have to be more epic and be called Once Upon a Time in Mexico.' She agreed, and off we went.”
Rodriguez began accumulating various ideas, the first of which was the character of a corrupt CIA agent (who would eventually be portrayed by Johnny Depp) and several other characters and plot lines that would one day be used to create an epic saga built around the El Mariachi character. “The script is a combination of many different stories I heard from my uncle who was in the FBI,” says Rodriguez. “Some are true, others have been twisted into fiction. Rubén Blades basically plays my uncle in the movie and I used some of the stories he told me to connect all the characters together. It's a combination of realism and fantasy. All the movies I've done have been somewhat fantasy and Once Upon a Time in Mexico is no exception.”
But as with Desperado, Once Upon a Time in Mexico is not a sequel in the strict sense of the term. While El Mariachi (Antonio Banderas) and his beloved Carolina (Salma Hayek) return, their story snakes off in unexpected ways. Other performers like Danny Trejo and Cheech Marin are back as well, but playing different characters - in another nod to Leone, who would kill off characters, then bring the actors back in different roles in the next film. Then there are the new characters, most of them with different storylines that eventually dovetail around El Mariachi. They are played by Depp, Willem Dafoe, Eva Mendes, Mickey Rourke and Enrique Iglesias (the singing sensation who makes his film debut as one of El Mariachi's sidekicks in what Rodriguez says is another film homage - to the young musical star Ricky Nelson, who appeared in Howard Hawks' western Rio Bravo).
“Once Upon a Time in Mexico is more than just the third segment of the El Mariachi story,” Rodriguez explains. “It also contains flashback elements for the audience. It's almost as if it is part four of the story -- only part three doesn't really exist. The flashbacks to the `phantom' movie contain scenes with Antonio and Salma's previously unseen adventures, which gives this movie a more epic feel.”
In the `phantom' movie flashbacks, the audience learns how El Mariachi and Carolina fell in love, how they married and had a child. There are also a number of notable action sequences that explain why El Mariachi has gone into isolation, which is where we discover him at the start of Once Upon a Time in Mexico. “The flashbacks also bring the audience up to date so that even if they've never seen any of the other movies, they know what El Mariachi and Carolina were like together and that they were a force to be reckoned with.”
|
Sitemaps, RSS Feeds & Social Networks
|
|||||||
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
||
