DESPERADO

US, 1995, 106 minutes, Colour.
Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Joachim de Almeda, Cheech Marron, Steve Buscemi, Carlos Gomez, Quentin Tarantino, Danny Trejo.
Directed by Robert Rodriguez.

Writer-director Robert Rodriguez made an entertaining Meixcan western on a miniscule budget, El Mariacchi. He so impressed Hollywood that they have given him more money than he needed, Antonio Banderas as the new brooding Mariacchi whose gunfighter gymnastics would make Quentin Tarantino envious. In fact, Tarantino turned up for a day's shooting (in both senses) and delivers a marvellous parody of the bar conversations he did so well in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Steve Buscemi also does a parody of the kind of roles he plays in cult films. But after that, while the tongue might be in the cheek, it is all so over the top with shootouts that it moves from funny parody to the laughably absurd. Overwrought.

1.The career of Robert Rodriguez? El Mariachi, small budget, his reputation? Bigger budget, remake – with sequel?

2.The contemporary setting, Mexico, the towns, the homesteads, the streets, the cars? The contemporary feel? Yet the background of a Mexican western? The musical score, the mariachi and his music, with the little boy?

3.The opening, Steve Buscemi and his story to the bartender, the way of verbal storytelling? The climaxes, the tongue-in-cheek? The fear of the bartender? The other people in the bar? The flashback to El Mariachi, going into the bar, the confrontation with the bartender, searching for Bucho? The elaborate shootout? The final shooting of the bartender?

4.The violence, the western shootouts, the guns, machine guns? The visualising of the shootouts?

5.The desperado, El Mariachi, what he had suffered from Bucho, his search for him, getting Buscemi to find out where he might be found? The shootouts, the violin case? The music, with the little boy? Coming into the town, the confrontation with the bartender? The information about Bucho? The encounter with the knife-thrower, being wounded, Buscemi’s death? The knife-thrower’s death?

6.The encounter with Carolina, her position in the town, helping him, his wounds? Falling in love, the sex scenes? Credibility? His continued mission, her help? The finale?

7.Bucho, the drugs, his ranch, his henchmen, the brutality? His enmity with El Mariachi? Seeing him in action, ordering deaths? With Carolina, the relationship? The build-up to the final confrontation?

8.The background of the western types, Cheech Marron as the short bartender? The other men in the bars? The henchmen?

9.The Quentin Tarantino scene? Tarantino talk, his explanation of the story, the joke? The shootout?

10.Steve Buscemi, the cameo role, the comic storytelling – and his death?

11.Popular ingredients – and in the light of Rodriguez’s subsequent career, an exercise in film technique and genres?