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 esperado
is the second film in a trilogy of modern day "westerns"
set in Mexico, all written and directed by Robert
Rodriguez. The first film, El Mariachi, was released in
1992. Desperado followed in 1995, and Once Upon a Time in
Mexico concluded things in 2003. Desperado is the only one of the
three that I've seen, (though we've got Once Upon A Time In Mexico
DVD sitting on the TV right now; review to come soon) I watched it on
video in November 2004, and until I checked the date on IMDB, I would
have said it was released in 2000 or so. It feels contemporary, looks
modern day, and feels as or more current than any other action film in
the theaters today.
The plot of Desperado,
what there is of it, involves a mysterious black-clad Mariachi guitarist
who wants revenge on a drug dealer who killed his wife and shot him in
the hand, years before. You're not seeing Desperado for the story
though, since the "plot" serves the same purpose as the plot
in a porno film; it's just a way to move the characters from one action
scene to another. Not that you'll have to watch Desperado with the
fast forward button at ready; the non-action stuff isn't bad, it's just
entirely irrelevant to the motion of the story, which inexorably heads
towards a big face off as the lone mariachi guns down the drug dealer's
army and moves towards a battle with the drug dealer himself.
Overall, this isn't a
very good movie, but it's fun, it's got a lot of action, it's
photographed beautifully, and they shoot a lot and blow a lot of things
up. It's also far cleverer and funnier than your average dumb action
movie, with lots of relatively witty dialogue, very inventive action
sequences, and humor all through.
To the scores:
(Click here to see these
categories explained.)
Desperado
Script/Story: 4
Acting/Casting: 7
Action: 7
Humor: 6
Eye Candy: 5
Fun Factor: 6
Replayability: 6
Overall: 6.5
I'll run down the
scoring elements on this one, since I don't have any more general
comments to make.
Script/Story: 4
The weakest part of the film, and what keeps it from getting a
higher score, simply because there is almost no plot or story. Rodriguez
obviously had a bunch of fun stunts and action sequences in mind, and
for him the "story" serves the same purpose it does in your
typical porno. The acting is fine, and there are a few nice scenes of
dialogue, but there's no logical order to anything, and no sense of
rising action or conflict; just a series of loosely-related action
scenes. Antonio Banderas' character is the hero, he wants revenge on the
evil drug dealer who shot his hand off, and he's going to get it.
We get the set up in the first few minutes, and are on cruise control
ever after.
Acting/Casting: 7
Despite the
actors having very little of importance to do, they all did a good job.
Banderas was fine, Salma Hayak was hot and fiesty, Cheech Marin was a
funny bartender, the guy playing the evil drug dealer was good, etc. The
acting was fine; the problem was the story they were acting in, not
their performances.
Action: 7
There's a lot of it, and it's much more inventive than your typical
action movie (not that that's saying much), but it's never really all
that exciting. It's more clever than thrilling, as characters do
relatively realistic things, until the story calls for them to do
incredibly silly and unrealistic things. The budget was clearly
small for this picture, so they aren't any huge stunts with dozens of
vehicles or helicopters or anything like that. But the smallness makes
the action that is there much more intimate and intense, as characters
battle and shoot almost face to face. There's an early shoot out in a
bar that ends with dozens of corpses and two characters out of bullets.
They freeze, eyes wide, then dive from corpse to corpse, seizing
discarded guns which they try to fire... only to hear the click of an
empty chamber. It's played for humor, and it's funny, like much of the
action.
The action is also
somewhat surreal; it's not Charlie's
Angels fake, and there's not a bunch of cheesy wire fu, but the gun
play and explosions are far from realistic, since the good guys seem to
have about 10x the hit points of anyone else. There are several scenes
with at least a dozen bad guys banging away with machine guns, the
bullets of which simply vanish before tearing the good guy apart as he
takes shelter behind a flimsy piece of wood. Nothing different
than your average early Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, really.
Humor: 6
It wasn't a
comedy, but almost every little scene has a few small funny touches, and
quite often there are laugh out loud moments when you least expect them.
The script is very well done in that way. You also have to realize I'm
grading this one on a curve, since after all, it's an action movie with
a few scenes of comedy. I don't even score the "comedy" in
most action movies, since there's not enough of it to bother with, and
if I did I'd just give them a 2 or a 3 at best. In light of that, a 6
for Desperado is a very high score, for this type of film.
Eye Candy: 5
It all takes
place almost entirely in a very western-looking Mexican town, with run
down cars and old buildings and dirt streets and such, so aside from eye
candy in the form of Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayak, and lots of pretty
fire explosions, there's not much to look at. Even this 5 is a bit high,
in retrospect, and I'd lower it if not for the so-sexy black miniskirt
and belly-baring black top Salma trotted around in for the last half of
the movie.
Fun Factor: 6
Ehh. With
enough of a plot to make the action sequences seem at least slightly
logical, this movie could have been a lot of fun. It wasn't bad, but I
was bored some of the time, waiting for the bad guy to stop his latest
crazy rant, or for Antonio to stop brooding and just get to the next
action scene.
Replayability: 6
Another "ehh"
score. I borrowed the tape from the library, watched it once, and took
it back. I have no plans to buy the DVD, but if it were on TV tomorrow
I'd watch it, at least enough to skip back whenever whatever else I was
watching went to commercial.
Overall: 6.5
This one really
makes me want to go back and redo the overall score for every
movie I've ever reviewed, or at least the action movies. Not so much
for the sake of Desperado, but just because I've rated every movie at
that time, on its own merits, but without comparing them to other past
scores. Looking at the 80+ scores now, I'd like to do some tweaking of
scores, to get them into something with more overall cohesion. Desperado
is clearly better than derivative crap like Van Helsing (6) or one-note
amusement like Freddy vs. Jason (6.5), or flawed eye candy like The Day
After Tomorrow (7), just to list three recent films and my wacky scores
for them. But at the same time it's not really a very good movie, since
the story is so non-existent. Yet I gave a few quality action movies
that were boring even lower scores (X-men 1 got a 5 from me) even
though they are inarguably better movies than Desperado or the other
three I've listed in this paragraph.
So here I am, with half
a dozen individual rating categories, and I'm still looking for more
ways to quantify the scores. Pity poor Ebert, with only a thumbs up/down
option?
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