Desperado Movie Trailer. Robert Rodriguez originally meant to leave the hero of “El Mariachi” shot in the hand, with a wound so dire that the Mariachi’s musical career would be over. Then along came Columbia Pictures, trumpeting Mr. Rodriguez’s $7,000 Spanish-language home movie as a triumph of ingenuity and, incidentally, making sure the Mariachi would enjoy a magical recovery and go on to play his guitar in style.
So in a sequel called “Desperado” (made for roughly 1,000 times the first film’s shooting cost), here is Antonio Banderas, taking on the hero’s role and looking his red-hot best. Mr. Banderas is shown off during an opening title sequence that finds him striding atop a nightclub bar in tight, silver-studded black. This limber, long-haired new Mariachi cuts an even more dashing figure thanks to a guitar-shaped wall of light bulbs beaming behind him and Los Lobos on the soundtrack, making the music soar. Progress can be a wonderful thing.
But it has a price, as Mr. Rodriguez knew when he acknowledged worries about being accused of sophomore slump in “Rebel Without a Crew,” his book-length account of being catapulted from no-budget film making into the film-festival fast lane. The first time out, he was heralded for having made any film at all, especially such a substantial film, on the strength of nothing but sheer wit and willpower. That’s much the same basis on which Kevin Smith’s “Clerks” and Edward Burns’s “Brothers McMullen” have since been admired.
But now that Mr. Rodriguez has begun working on a grander scale, the facetiousness of his material is more distracting and the jokes much likelier to wear thin. Overdependence on violence also marginalizes “Desperado” as a gun-slinging novelty item, instead of the broader effort toward which this talented young director might have aspired. It’s still clear that Mr. Rodriguez has a talent for fancy directorial footwork and that his movie has its fiery moments. But not even a Mariachi in Mr. Banderas’s league can get by on looks alone.
So “Desperado” meanders through a dusty Mexican landscape derived from other movies, with debts to film makers as irreconcilably different as Sam Peckinpah and Mel Brooks. (Whether or not Mr. Rodriguez actually has Mr. Brooks in mind, he makes his heroine a beautiful babe who runs a bookstore, though she complains that this is a region where nobody reads. The story’s vanilla-suited drug-lord villain also has all the accouterments of a Hollywood executive.)
John Woo’s influence accounts for the occasional midair leap with weapons blazing, and Quentin Tarantino is even on camera to tell a none-too-funny bathroom joke in lavish detail. Mr. Tarantino’s career as a celebrity walk-on is beginning to make him look like the Ghost of Christmas Future for other young directors who risk neglecting their own work too long.
Like “The Quick and the Dead,” “Desperado” wavers uneasily between myth making and parody, so that too many scenes drag on long after they’ve lost their punch. An opening bar showdown featuring Steve Buscemi and Cheech Marin has comic possibilities, but they’re long gone by the time the extras are wiped out and one of the scene’s principals gets a bullet in his brain.
Seen in the film’s poster cradling what may be one of the meanest looking guns in captivity, Mr. Banderas’s Mariachi arrives on the scene toting a guitar case full of firepower. He is here to avenge the killings seen in Mr. Rodriguez’s first film, which was originally scheduled for a straightforward English remake; actually, “Desperado” feels as much like a remake as a sequel, with similar elements holding it together. Salma Hayek, as the film’s midriff-baring bibliophile, replaces the Mariachi’s lost love and makes him a strikingly photogenic new mate. And Joaquim de Almeida fits in nicely as a suave heavy with a cellular phone.
Notable among the film’s pyrotechnics are some strikingly choreographed moments, like one in which Mr. Banderas and his adversary slide across a bar from different ends to wind up face to face, or a scene that finds him and Ms. Hayek leaping off a building with a fireball at their backs. Elaborately staged shootouts also keep the body count high.
The film’s final confrontation allows the Mariachi two well-armed backup men, one of whose guitar cases appears to hold a rocket launcher. Mr. Rodriguez may be good enough to make a film about anything, but “Desperado” would collapse if its characters had to do anything but play with guns.
“Desperado” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It includes profanity, lots of gunplay, messily graphic violence and one gentle, soft-core sex scene that involves the use of a spur.
Desperado (1995)
Directed by: Robert Rodriguez
Starring: Antonio Banderas, Joaquim de Almeida, Salma Hayek, Steve Buscemi, Cheech Marin, Quentin Tarantino, Carlos Gómez, Angela Lanza, Danny Trejo, Carlos Gallardo
Screenplay by: Robert Rodriguez
Production Design by: Cecilia Montiel
Cinematography by: Guillermo Navarro
Film Editing by: Robert Rodriguez
Costume Design by: Graciela Mazón
Art Direction by: Felipe Fernández del Paso
Music by: Los Lobos
MPAA Rating: R for strong bloody violence, a strong sex sequence and language.
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: August 25, 1995
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