Sept. 01, 2003 - 6:50 pm
in preparation for Once Upon A Time In Mexico (2003) which should be coming out soon, i decided to go ahead and watch the two films that came before that one. it's a series by Robert Rodriguez. this was his first feature-length film and earned him quite a bit of praise.
El Mariachi is about a Mexican guitar player who travels to a new town with a naive optimism about making a living as a simple mariachi, but ends up becoming a makeshift warrior. he always carries around his guitar in its black case and he wears black pants and a black jacket. it just so happens that there is a dangerous drug dealer that has been killing the thugs of a crime boss, and he also happens to dress in all black and carry a guitar case. only his is full of guns. the thugs of the crime boss, Moco, are sent out to kill the man in black with the guitar case full of guns, but they repeatedly end up chasing the mariachi instead of the really dangerous drug dealer and he is forced to defend himself.
well, i was actually just wanting to watch this one to get the back story of the trilogy, but i think i probably enjoyed this much more than i will the other two. it has a heart to it that i don't see the other two having. i'm sure part of this is the fact that the lead character is played by a different actor in this one. he has a lot of weaknesses that the altered Antonio Banderas character cannot show. he's not really a man's man in this one, whereas the later character is.