Phil Elmore: Individual Authoring Services

Movie Corner
Desperado

Ah, Desperado. A film a friend of mine once referred to as "The Adventures of the Mexican Punisher." A film that features Antonio Banderas doing what Antonio Banderas does best: staring into the camera with his smoky eyes, brushing his unkempt yet feminine locks from those eyes, passionately embracing female leads, and shooting people in the face.

Desperado, Robert Rodriguez' sequel-meets-remake of his stunning El Mariachi, differs from Mariachi in several key ways. True, both films are about men with guitar cases full of guns. True, these men wear cute little waist-length jackets in both movies. True, there is Spanish music in both. But El Mariachi was filmed for one dollar and eighty cents, an amount that decreases each time a movie critic discusses precisely how little money Rodriguez managed to spend on it. (In fact, simply by mentioning this, I have reduced the amount yet again, rendering El Mariachi the only action movie ever to be filmed and directed entirely by the homeless, on a budget of three railroad-track-flattened nickels and half a tuna sandwich.) By contrast, Desperado was filmed for eighty gazillion dollars, fifty percent of which went to purchase hair-care products for Banderas and his female lead, Salma Hyek.

The stars do make a difference. It is immediately obvious, for example, that Banderas is much better looking than Carlos Gallardo (the star of El Mariachi). Salma Hyek, of course, is much better looking than Consuelo Gómez, though Ms. Gómez is, if I remember at all correctly, actually an actress. Ms. Hyek couldn't act her way out of a wet paper bag before Chuck Norris beat her to it, but one gathers that her acting ability is not quite as important as her ability to fill a Wonderbra and sing Hispanic melodies in sexy torch-song fashion while Antonio very seriously considers shooting her in the face with his sawed-off shotgun just to shut her up.

But I digress.

As the film opens, Steve Buscemi, having gotten lost on his way to an independent film festival, stops in a Mexican bar that serves urine exclusively. He regales the patrons with tales of That Big Mexican Guy With The Guitar Case Full Of Guns Who Kills Drug Dealers. Cheech Marin, doing his best to dispel the stereotype that Mexicans are sweaty criminals who speak in broken English, plays a sweaty criminal bartender who speaks in broken English. Mr. Marin espouses his theory that, "The bartender never gets killed," but Mr. Buscemi squelches that rumor pretty quickly. Having consumed his glass of tepid urine, he leaves so Antonio Banderas can show up and kill everybody.

Show up and kill everybody Antonio does, while Quentin Tarantino, having wandered into the movie by accident, is horribly killed just because it's fun to horribly kill Quentin Tarantino. Antonio doesn't just kill everybody; he kills them a lot, throwing himself around with acrobatic glee as he empties the magical three-hundred-round magazines of his twin stainless steel Rugers.

Just what drives a character like Antonio Banderas' Mexican Punisher, anyway? Well, it seems drug dealers shot his hand and his girlfriend, ending his guitar career and ruining his Prom. Having adopted sidekick Buscemi -- whose character's name might as well be "Deadmeat," as sidekicks to vigilante killers have a shelf life half as long as a red-shirt Star Trek crewman and one-fiftieth that of a Cher marriage -- Banderas wanders from town to town, shooting drug dealers and their sweaty, stereotypical Mexican henchmen. That's all the motivation Antonio really needs, and all the average action film fan is going to care about, especially when the scenes that don't involve shooting are filled with lingering slow-motion shots of Salma Hyek's breasts walking down the street in front of Ms. Hyek.

The villain of the piece is a scruffy, deep-voiced character whose name sounds like (and almost certainly is not spelled as) "Boocho." He's an Evil Drug Dealer, and that's really all you need to know about him. He has a Hot Female Henchwoman who wears leather pants, and lots of male henchman whom he shoots whenever he gets really bored. Boocho's is a tough gang, too, because to get in you first have to let another henchman cripple you and then kill him to prove how tough you are. This is sort of like trying to pass the CPA exam on the first try, only less violent and less stressful.

Well, Boocho doesn't take kindly to someone shooting a whole bunch of his henchman before he has a chance to do it himself. Pissed as he is, he still takes time to shoot at his remaining henchman, attempting to motivate them to go out and shoot Antonio. (Really, the benefit of firearms as a motivational tool has not been fully explored, and deserves further study. I can think of several business meetings I was forced to attend that could have been significantly improved by shooting everyone.)

Along the way the ugliest Mexican actor in film, whose name escapes me, shows up to complicate matters. He wears a vest full of throwing knives, has no spoken lines, and manages to stick Antonio a few times. Boocho's men show up and, horrified by the killer's ugliness, shoot him dead.

There are some sublots. One involves a cute little Mexican boy, or a puppy, or something; it's hard to care. Another involves the budding relationship between Antonio and Salma Hyek, who ruins their time together by yammering on incessantly in that annoying and accented voice of hers. As I mentioned, Antonio very seriously considers shooting her in the face just to shut her up, but settles for blowing up a few henchman and watching her bookstore burn down.

The stage is set for the climactic battle in which Antonio battles Boocho, who turns out to be Antonio's long lost brother, a plot twist about which nobody much gives a damn. Antonio goes to a payphone and calls his fellow superheroes of the Mexican Punisher Justice League.

These two show up carrying gimmicky Official El Mariachi Guitar Case and Lunch Box Weaponry. One has a pair of guitar cases with machine guns built into them, and the other has a guitar case with a pair of rocket launchers built into it. Fortunately for them, and for us the viewers, they're both killed almost immediately. Carlos Gallardo, who appears as one of them ("No, really, Carlos," Robert Rodriguez tells him, "I promise you can be in the sequel") looks pretty grateful when his character and his acting career die.

Antonio, despite the fact that it will make Christmas awkward, decides he has no choice but to kill Evil Drug Dealing Brother Boocho. A gunfight ensues, which we are not allowed to see.

Somewhere in here the cute Mexican boy or the puppy are wounded, and Antonio and Salma -- having either survived, won, or merely fled the final gunfight -- take him or it to the hospital or the Vet. In Mexico, these two facilities are generally hard to tell apart. The Vet's office is cleaner.

The film ends to the strains of the excellent Desperado soundtrack, as Antonio leaves his guitar case full of illegal automatic weaponry on the side of the road for the neighborhood children to play with. Salma, having nothing and nobody better to do, accompanies him as he rides off into the dusty Mexican sunset.

Desperado is not a good film, but it does leave the viewer with two very important lessons:

1. Antonio Banderas is pretty convincing as a pissed-off Mexican Punisher who enjoys shooting people in the face.

2. Salma Hyek is annoying.

Ms. Hyek, no doubt, will arrive at my door any day now, spoiling for a fight. She will probably have to get in line behind a drunken and mumbling Patrick Swayze, but I have no doubt either one of them could beat me up.