Sept. 01, 2003 - 7:07 pm
continuing on with the El Mariachi trilogy from Rodriguez, i went ahead and watched Desperado as soon as i finished with El Mariachi (1992). be sure to read that entry first. <--
this film stars Antonio Banderas as the mariachi who comes into a new town because he hears that his most hated enemy, Bucho, is somewhere nearby. his only wish is to kill Bucho, and Bucho is constantly preparing himself for this oncoming killer who everyone else thinks does not exist except in legend. the mariachi also meets a beautiful bookstore owner who helps to protect him from harm and just generally keep things exciting.
well, there are all sorts of changes and things that are not similar between the first movie and the second. at the end of the first movie, the mariachi had finished with his vendetta and had lost his hand, getting it replaced by a mechanical prosthetic. in this movie, we have a different leading man with more attitude and less heart. he's also an experienced killer with only an injured hand that no longer plays guitar very well. also, he has a vendetta against Bucho, who we are meant to believe is one of the thugs from Moco's gang (even though we never saw him in the first film). yeah, so the motives are not as good in this movie. but i guess he had to make a few changes to things to keep it exciting. plus most people had never and have never seen El Mariachi, so i'm sure Rodriguez figured that it didn't really matter after all.
so this movie is entertaining, but not as great as the first. also, stylistically it's just a world apart. the first film is sort of innovative and uses some nutty cinematography and editing similar to that in the Evil Dead series of films. Desperado seems like Quentin Tarantino took over the mind of Robert Rodriguez. this is totally a Quentin Tarantino film. i've lost any sense of what Rodriguez was originally like with Bed Head (1991) and El Mariachi (1992). i mean he even got Tarantino to play a small role in the film.
anyway, it's fun to watch. hopefully Johnny Depp will add something to the new film. he seems on fire right now.