Desperado is a bit of an old one (1995) by Robert Rodriguez starring Antonio Bandaras. I’ve seen it a good number of times but have never reviewed it before. Since I rewatched it last night I figure this is the best time to do so..
Plot
“I’m looking for a man, calls himself Bucho.”
The movie starts with a sleezy looking bar where a man named Buscemi (played by Steve Buscemi) recounts a tale of “the biggest Mexican I have ever seen” and how he basically goes on a murderous rampage, killing everyone in search of information about a man named Bucho. Buscemi then leaves, warning that the man is on his way to town.
It turns out that the man is a Mariachi who is looking for vengeance. If you’ve ever seen “El Mariachi” then you already know why as this is a direct sequel to that film. If you haven’t, basically the Mariachi gets mixed up with a killer by a drug lord and is chased all around town. Eventually he’s captured and, well, the Mariachi sums up what happens to him with this line: “They killed the woman I loved and ruined my life.” Oh and he got a huge hole in his hand. Now he’s hunting down all the drug lords and is down to his final one: Bucho.
The film is basically just him killing as many bad guys as he can as he tries to draw out and get closer to Bucho. Eventually he’s injured and is taken care of by Carolina (Selma Hayek). She gets involved and it all leads up to the final confrontation.
The Good
+ Lots of action, if you’re into that sort of thing
+ I enjoyed the music a lot in this film (“Strange Face of Love” is an awesome song to me and one of my favorites still)
+ A decent twist happens towards the end
+ There’s a cameo appearance by the guy who played El Mariachi in the first film (he plays Campa)
+ There’s quite a bit of humor in this film, mostly around Bucho and his dealings with his henchmen.
The Bad
+ The plot iiiiiiiiiiis a little thin. It literally is a bang-em-up, shoot-em-up type film.
+ The romance subplot isn’t really believable at all but I wouldn’t expect it to in this kind of film
+ This film can seem a little cartoonish at times. I mean, how many times can 20 henchmen shoot at the Mariachi and miss him when they’re using freakin machine guns?! There’s parts where he’s literally just walking and bullets are shooting everywhere around him but seem to constantly miss him.
What The?
+ What’s the point of having Quentin Tarantino in this film again?? I mean, his character. I know Tarantino and Rodriguez are BFFs and all, but the character he plays doesn’t really serve any point other than to tell a joke and to show something we already know (the bar is corrupt and does backdoor dealings).
Overall, I really like this film. If you can turn your brain off and can enjoy mindless violence, shootouts and crazy crap going on then it’s awesome. If you CAN’T do that, and you’re an overly analytical person and can’t get past some of the cartoonish aspect of it all, you’ll probably hate it. For me, I’ll give it 4 out of 5 just because it still makes me laugh with its humor, makes songs stuck in my head with its music and I just enjoy the senseless shootouts.