Taglines: He came back to settle the score with someone. Anyone. EVERYONE.
Desperado movie storyline. With this sequel to his prize-winning independent previous film, “El Mariachi,” director Robert Rodriquez joins the ranks of Sam Peckinpah and John Woo as a master of slick, glamorized ultra-violence. We pick up the story as a continuation of “El Mariachi,” where an itinerant musician, looking for work, gets mistaken for a hitman and thereby entangled in a web of love, corruption, and death.
This time, he is out to avenge the murder of his lover and the maiming of his fretting hand, which occurred at the end of the earlier movie. However, the plot is recapitulated, and again, a case of mistaken identity leads to a very high body count, involvement with a beautiful woman who works for the local drug lord, and finally, the inevitable face-to-face confrontation and bloody showdown.
Desperado is a 1995 American contemporary Western action film written, produced, and directed by Robert Rodriguez. A sequel to the 1992 film El Mariachi, it is the second installment in Robert Rodriguez’s Mexico Trilogy. It stars Antonio Banderas as the mariachi who seeks revenge on the drug lord who killed his lover. The film was screened out of competition at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. Once Upon a Time in Mexico, the final part of the trilogy, was released in 2003. Desperado grossed $25.4 million in the United States.
Rodriguez’s friend Quentin Tarantino has a cameo as “Pick-up Guy”. Carlos Gallardo, who played the title role of El Mariachi, appears in Desperado as Campa, a friend to Banderas’ Mariachi. Since Banderas replaced Gallardo as the actor for the main character, the filmmakers re-shot the final showdown from El Mariachi as a flashback sequence for Banderas’ character in Desperado. Raúl Juliá was originally cast as Bucho but died before production began on October 24, 1994. Principal photography took place entirely in Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, across from Del Rio, Texas.
The film’s score is written and performed by the Los Angeles rock band, Los Lobos, performing Chicano rock and traditional Ranchera music. Their performance of “Mariachi Suite” won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance at the 1995 Grammy Awards. Other artists on the soundtrack album include Dire Straits, Link Wray, Latin Playboys, and Carlos Santana. Musician Tito Larriva has a small role in the film, and his band, Tito & Tarantula, contributed to the soundtrack as well.
About the Story
At the Tarasco bar in Mexico, an American man tells the story of how he witnessed a massacre in another bar committed by a Mexican with a guitar case full of guns. The bar’s patrons are uninterested until the American (named Buscemi after the actor) mentions the name “Bucho”. Meanwhile, El Mariachi has a dream of his encounter with Moco, Bucho’s underling, who killed his lover dead and shot his left hand. He is awakened by Buscemi, who tells him to continue his search for Bucho at the bar.
El Mariachi meets a child, who allegedly plays guitar for a living. He gives the boy some pointers. At the Tarasco bar, El Mariachi engages in a tense standoff with Bucho’s goons before a massive gunfight erupts. He kills everyone in the bar, but Tavo, who was in a back room earlier, survives and follows him outside. On the street, Tavo wounds El Mariachi before being killed himself. Carolina, the woman who El Mariachi shields from Tavo’s bullets, takes him to her bookstore. Bucho arrives at the bar to survey the carnage. Paranoid, Bucho orders his men to hunt down the man “dressed in black”.
In the bookstore, Carolina tends to El Mariachi’s wounds. While he rests, she discovers the guns in his guitar case and realizes who he is. El Mariachi asks her to help him find Bucho. He goes to the town church and talk to Buscemi. Upset by the massacre at the bar, Buscemi convinces El Mariachi to give up his quest for blood. Outside the church, a man armed with throwing knives ambushes them, kills Buscemi and severely wounds El Mariachi. Bucho’s men arrive at the scene, mistake the man (who dresses in black) for El Mariachi and kill him. They take the body back to Bucho, who realizes they have killed the wrong person, a hit-man named Navajas sent by the Colombians to kill El Mariachi.
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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