**/**** Image A Sound A
starring Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Joaquim de Almeida, Steve Buscemi
written and directed by Robert Rodriguez
by Vincent Suarez With 1993’s El Mariachi, director Robert Rodriguez wowed critics and arthouse audiences with his sheer talent and passion for filmmaking. Shot on a budget of merely $7,000 and with a cast and crew of Rodriguez’s friends, El Mariachi was a gleefully amateurish work of pure cinema. Upon garnering awards and praise at the Sundance Film Festival, Columbia Pictures agreed to distribute the film and finance Rodriguez’s Hollywood debut. Which prompted one to ask what Rodriguez could accomplish with a real budget and real talent at his disposal. Desperado (1995) provided the answer to that question: not much. Essentially a remake of El Mariachi, Desperado is full of the glitz and flashiness that one would expect of a visceral filmmaker like Rodriguez but has none of the heart or joy of El Mariachi. It’s a “cool” movie that leaves the viewer feeling…well, cold.
The film begins well enough, as a stranger (Steve Buscemi) strolls into a Mexican dive and recounts the tale of a mysterious, guitar-toting gunman who slaughtered the patrons of a bar in a nearby town. In flashback, we see the carnage, as the Mariachi (Antonio Banderas) whips an arsenal of firearms from his guitar case and unloads on his prey. In operatic fashion (and with large debts to Sergio Leone, John Woo, and Sam Peckinpah, among others), Rodriguez has effectively established the myth of “the mariachi.”
Unfortunately, the film quickly devolves into a series of increasingly ridiculous shootouts, strung together along the barest of plotlines. It seems the Mariachi is out for revenge against Bucho (Joaquim de Almeida), a drug lord whose henchmen murdered his woman and nearly destroyed his hand. Along the way, the Mariachi teams up with Carolina (Salma Hayek), the local bookstore owner, who is on Bucho’s payroll and is quite possibly a reluctant mistress. As the film makes its way, in fits and starts, towards its inevitable conclusion, Rodriguez throws in a not-so-surprising twist that, like everything else in the film, amounts to nothing and has little bearing on the outcome.
Still, the real problem with Desperado is not its plot, or lack thereof; El Mariachi hardly impressed on the basis of its narrative of an honest musician mistaken for the mythical, guitar-playing assassin. No, Desperado fails because its raison d’être, the shootouts, are literally a bloody mess. As skilled as Rodriguez is at romanticizing violence, he seems to have no sense of pace or space. A bar that seemingly has a dozen or so bad guys suddenly has about 30, coming at Banderas in all directions, from places never properly delineated in establishing shots. (An extended bit of gunplay takes place on opposite ends of an initially one-sided bar.) As editor, Rodriguez cuts the action together without rhythm or structure, causing one to stare blankly at the screen without the slightest bit of excitement or emotional investment in the characters. Sure, Banderas looks great in black denim, and Hayek looks devastatingly lovely in whatever that is she’s wearing, but neither the action nor the story is well-executed enough that I cared what happened to either of them. As a result, I watched Desperado feeling pretty desperate for a glimpse of the innocence and ingenuity that characterized El Mariachi.
THE DVD
At least my eyes and ears were happy: Columbia’s no-frills DVDs are short on extras but long on quality, and their Desperado disc is no exception. Lacking an interesting menu or even so much as a trailer (the DVD is, however, captioned in English, subtitled in Spanish and Korean, and dubbed in French and Spanish), the film nevertheless looks and sounds beautiful.* The images have a glow and a crispness at which the theatrical presentation only hinted, and the Dolby Digital 5.1 track is both explosive and completely enveloping; this is one disc that will give your rear speakers, and your subwoofer, a serious workout. (Late-night viewers should be cautioned, though, that the sound is not very well-balanced, and you may find yourself riding the volume control each time Banderas opens his guitar case.) In short, this is one of those transfers–all-too-familiar to fans of LaserDisc and DVD–that leaves one longing for so many infinitely better films to receive this kind of exceptional treatment.
As an aside, the disc begins with a brief but excellent montage of current and upcoming Columbia TriStar DVD releases. Among the films depicted is Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which presently seems unlikely to appear on DVD anytime soon due to its maker’s reluctance to support the fledgling format. CE3K is exactly the sort of film deserving of the attention lavished upon the transfer of Desperado and, if this preview is any indication, it will make a particularly stunning disc. So, fans of what is arguably Spielberg’s best film should unite, and drop him a line demanding this film on DVD!
103 minutes; R; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, French Dolby Surround, Spanish Dolby Surround; CC; Spanish, Korean subtitles; DVD-5; Region One; Columbia TriStar
*Desperado‘s LaserDisc featured a full-length commentary by Rodriguez, but only 2-channel Dolby Surround.
