ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO

Rating: 4

ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO, the latest installment of Robert Rodriguez’s EL MARIACHI series. begins with a bang and barely pauses to catch its breath until its suitably bloody denouement. Antonio Banderas returns as the fastest guitar in Mexico, and I don’t just mean the way he pounds out chords on his stringed instrument of choice.
This time out, there are a whole lot of characters, some of them returned from the seeming dead, and a whole lot of plot, some of which continues the drama of the other two films. Fortunately, keeping all that straight is not the point. Lots of action told with high-pitched hyperbole is. Thus we get looming buildings, ominous music, and melodrama so fevered that it threatens to spontaneously combust at any moment. And through, around and above it all, El Mariachi glides spewing countless rounds of firepower with all the effortless grace of the Angel of Death, albeit one with tight pants and really cool jangly accessories.
The short version of what’s going on has something to do with an evil drug kingpin (Willem Dafoe) plotting to overthrow Mexico’s president. El Mariachi gets involved when CIA agent Sands (Johnny Depp) wants to recruit him for reasons that change with every new reel of film. Who the agent wants dead and why and for what reason, well, as I said, it’s just not important. Into this web of intrigue we also get a retired FBI agent (Reuben Blades), with a grudge personal and professional against the kingpin, an American hood (Mickey Rourke looking like death not quite warmed over) who’s on the lam with his Chihuahua, and a beautiful Mexican policewoman (Eva Mendes). El’s sidekicks, Enrique Iglesias (who sings better than he acts) and Danny Trejo are along for some of the fun. And, in keeping with the Rodriguez tradition, Cheech Marin and something bad happens to him.
Banderas does that dangerous brooding to perfection, whether leaping from impossible heights or remembering in cinematic flashback his recent life with dangerous beauty Carolina (Salma Hayak). He could stare down a Mack truck barreling at him at 120 mph, It is, however, Depp who steals the film as the operative with questionable taste in tourist togs and a penchant for inviting people to taste his pork. It’s hard to explain. He is Bandares’ tonal opposite, slick and cool and definitely dangerous, but done with another deliciously fey exploration of his feminine side that raises androgyny to new and exalted heights. He also offers a refreshing tonic to the scads of testosterone exuded by everyone else in the cast and I am including Hayak and Mendes.
ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO is a tall tale told with mythic idiom and infused with both wicked humor and a sense of irony that renders even the goriest mayhem into a wacky exercise in effervescent slapstick. I suppose that if one wanted to get philosophical, one could also opine that, at heart, it’s also an existential meditation on humankind’s search for freedom. But, like the overwrought plot, it’s not important. What is important is that it’s a wailing good time