El mariachi

I have loved some of Robert Rodriguez's later works like Sin City, so I was pretty excited to see this movie.

The movie is extremely small budget and it really feels like it is more expensive than that. I mean, Robert Rodriguez makes this movie look like it had much more money spent on it, and that is because of his creativity and resourcefulness.

The directing is really good. I loved many of the shots and scenes in this movie and the way they are edited.

My problem with the film or at least my dilemma is... I just find this movie OK. The main actor and character itself is pretty lousy, the movie is too long for its own good, and the story is just OK.

Many people argue that this might be justified because of the low budget. But I do believe that all of the story problems don't have anything to do with the budget. It is not as if I don't like low-budget films, I LOVE "The Evil Dead" and other low-budget films. I just find this movie uneventful, and sometimes boring.

I think this film is the kind of film you should only watch once and move on with your life. I do recommend you to watch it though.

Having experienced director Robert Rodriguez's most recent film, the zombie horror pastiche Planet Terror (2007) - which was sold as a double bill with Quentin Tarantino's femme-exploitation revisionist film Death Proof (2007) as a modern-day homage to low-budget 70's drive-in cinema - I couldn't help but feel somewhat disappointed by its obvious disregard of the low-budget format in favour of CGI, explosions and A-list cameos. Now, although Planet Terror was hardly a big budget affair, it was clearly the work of an experienced filmmaker with his own studio and facilities and a collection of superstar friends willing to turn up and do a couple of days work at a reduced fee. However, with this, his first film, Rodriguez creates a perfect example of the grindhouse ethos in a more contemporary sense; i.e. a violent, low-budget exploitation picture with a minuscule cast of mostly no professional actors and with almost every single technical role carried out by the director himself.

Unlike Planet Terror - which is a good film and one that I did enjoy - the final result here is lively and inventive, with none of the generic clichés and nodding irony of that more recent project. It not only shows the efforts of low-budget film-making at its best, but uses the same shortcomings of low-budget film-making to its advantage. In this respect, it reminds me of something that Roger Corman might have produced in the 1970's, with the exploitative reliance on violence and the corruption of innocence as its central theme, and the excitement and imagination that permeates the direction of Rodriguez from the first frame to the last. The film can obviously be approached as a minor-key riff on the very noir-like notions of mistaken identity, small-town corruption and the vision of the mysterious gunslinger, with Rodriguez creating his own blend of "Mexploitation" cinema that would continue with the bigger-budgeted sequel/re-make Desperado (1995) and the third instalment, Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003), which just might be the director's best film (or at least, the most entertaining). You can also see certain parallels with a film like From Dusk till Dawn (1996) and the proposed Machete (2008), though really; these films come nowhere near the verve, grit and vitality of the film in question.

If you can get past the technical limitations, the use of the Spanish language and the reliance on non-professional actors, then El Mariachi (1992) is a great film. Not a masterpiece, but simply a great film; one that offers entertainment value and some genuine no-budget ingenuity and - if watched with the added bonus of the director's commentary function - an effective, makeshift film school. I suppose you could always disagree that the film is more successful as a result of the low-budget, as I guess there are some elements here that audiences might see as shoddy or indeed comical due to the lack of funds and experience. Nonetheless, the film really does use these limitations to further the story and the occasional moments of light comedy, not to mention the creation of those enigmatic dream-sequences, which Rodriguez claims were shot simply to use up the last few feet of film on each reel. It all works though, creating a film that is wild, violent, funny, charming and above all else, unpredictable.

This movie put director Robert Rodriguez "on the map." He followed up with two sequels: "Desperado" and "Once Upon A Time In Mexico." Not surprising, the best of the three was this low-budget opening film. As Rodriquez had more and more money to spend on the sequels, the stories got more and more carried away with too many explosions and special-effects, losing the charm of this first effort.

Unlike the sequels, this Mexican-made, so it is in Spanish with English subtitles. Don't let that scare you away. There isn't a great deal of dialog so keeping up with the subtitles is very easy.

The movie has very interesting camera closeups and angles as Rodriquez showed he was going to be a stylish director. The story is simple but effective, suspenseful and even with some humor. Unnlike his subsequent films in this trilogy, the action is not overdone here.

The length is also is a plus. At 80 minutes you can be thoroughly entertained in less than an hour-and-a half. The only disappointment to me was the print quality on th DVD, but I got an early edition. There might be better editions out since. It's not fuzzy but it's not sharp, either.

Anyway: highly recommend for actions/crime buffs who like style in their photography, or saw the sequels and would like to know the history of this particular "Mariachi."

El Mariachi (1992) was a fine debut for film maker Robert Rodriguez. He makes the most of his minuscule budget and makes a very entertaining action film. The story behind the making of the film is even more interesting than the movie itself. You can tell from this movie that Robert Rodriguez had a bright future in the movie business.

The story is about a musician who's trying to find work in a Mexican border town. None of the places he visits wants to hire a guitar player for their business. Meanwhile another man comes to town carrying a guitar case, he's no musician. He's a notorious hit man for a local gangster. When their paths cross, nothing but trouble lies ahead for the El Mariachi. Can the poor dude survive the week without being killed? Who is this guitar carrying killer? Why is he in town? What are the local crime boss' motives? To find out you'll have to watch EL MARIACHI!!!

An interesting debut that showed lots of promise. The movie was followed by a pseudo-sequel/remake a few years later with a bigger budget and a cast filled with a lot of named actors.

Highly recommended.

I know the budget for this film was somewhere between 5000 and 7000 dollars, but I would like to comment more on the pacing and frenetic film style Rodriguez bestows upon us. Low budget or not,this film has energy. It never lets down for more than a few minutes and the editing is amazing. Robert Rodriguez has such a knowledge of film-making that he makes this movie look like a million bucks easy. The film isn't perfect, but on sheer energy alone it will entertain you more than most over-blown Hollywood action films.