DESPERADO (B-) is the second entry into Robert Rodriguez' 'Mexico' trilogy of neo-Westerns following the story of El Mariachi who just wants to sing but continually finds himself avenging the murder of his loved ones. Rodriguez's first entry was an extremely low budget film that became an unexpected big hit spurring on this larger budgeted sequel - though it was still only 3 million or so. Antonio Banderas takes on the role of El Mariachi this time and turns the character from its "regular joe" in a mistaken identity movie roots into a genuine action with a charismatic action star. The story again is extremely minimalistic (it hews close to the formula of the first one) as El Mariachi is caught up in a series of action sequences with a local drug Lord intent on trying to kill him - there's also a random love interest (Salma Hayek) thrown in. The raise in budget and newfound success has both positive and negative on the final product here. In the positive. The shootouts have gone from short, heavily edited, Sam Peckinpah esque to larger John Woo inspired set pieces of varying quality. There is a bar shootout that is a lot of fun and makes Banderas look like a facsimile of Chow Yun-Fat. The raise in budget also allowed Rodriguez to let his comedy & style flag fly more and the most positive example of that is a hilarious cold open with Steve Buscemi. Unfortunately, his comedy/style is hit and miss and there's a few moments where it just comes off as indulgent and flat. There's some unnecessary stylistic flourishes (the rocket firing guitar case is over the line for me) and unnecessary nudity that, in my opinion, makes his work trashier than it needs to be. For the increase in action quality and charismatic star turn of Banderas, I'd recommend this one over El Mariachi but it does come with some tradeoffs.
Review of Desperado
