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With his virtually "no-budget" debut El Mariachi, Robert Rodriguez demonstrated his capacity to relate a rather banal story with enough focus and enough gusto to draw our attention away from the derivative plot and toward the movie's sheer execution, a feat of classical grungy entertainment that almost defies any serious critical explication. His over-budgeted sequel, on the other hand, instead of delivering on the promise of a fresh indie sensibility gone big-time, simply sinks into a lazy assurance of its own B-flick boisterousness. It's odd to discover how little interest Rodriguez seems to have invested into making his clunky little revenge western even remotely engaging, almost leading the viewer to suspect the possibility of a very tragic film-industry cliché: the money, the star power, and the stark abundance of resources have clouded Rodriguez's vision as a manufacturer of camp. Only a few of the screenplay's pointless contrivances (like a Quentin Tarantino cameo involving a very long and not particularly well told joke, or Steve Buscemi's introductory narration in a bar that cutely foreshadows the hero's first killing spree) summon up the idea that Rodriguez is just fooling around, which is exactly what he should be doing with a film that's already resigned itself to the lower notch of blockbuster entertainment. For the rest of Desperado's running time, however, the treatment of the material remains grim, studied, and joyless. The film plays as a sort of announcement, mandatory and inevitable, of Rodriguez's talent to the mainstream public, as if he weren't quite ready to manage that leap of faith on his own, not quite accustomed to the notion of transforming millions of dollars into a single motion picture. |
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Desperado |
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capsule review by André de Alencar Lyon |
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Robert Rodriguez |
