“The bartender never gets killed!”

Drake’s rating: The bartender got just a wee bit overconfident

Drake’s review: Am I shocked to find Desperado among the missing in the annals of Mutant Reviews? On the one hand, I am. This is, after all, one of the best action movies of the ‘90s (and of all time, quite honestly), a rip-roaring big-studio debut from a young director who would go on to have quite a successful career. On the other hand, it’s quite possible that any given Mutant watched Desperado and then, instead of writing a review, banged their head on the keyboard while shouting, “We’re not worthy!” like Wayne and Garth upon meeting Alice Cooper.

I get that, because it’s hard for me to write any sort of critical review of this film when all I really want to do is gush about how awesome it is and then rave about the stunts and then THAT SHOWDOWN, YOU GUYS! HOLY CRAP!!!

Ahem. Sorry about that. So, you all probably know the story behind this one. Robert Rodriguez wanted to direct a movie and scraped together some $7000. Shooting in Mexico on 16mm film, he put together El Mariachi, a story of a musician being mistaken for a criminal during a small-town drug war. It’s a tight little action flick that was lucky enough to get noticed by Columbia Pictures and, with a substantial escalation in budget during post-production, garnered enough press for the studio to fund a sequel a few years later. And that sequel is Desperado.

Picking up an indeterminate amount of time after the first film, Desperado finds our hero, known only as El Mariachi (Antonio Banderas, Assassins) entering a new town in search of a criminal kingpin named Bucho (Joaquim de Almeida, Clear and Present Danger). But the legend of El Mariachi precedes the man himself, and Bucho’s enforcers are on the lookout for a tall, dark man carrying a guitar case full of guns.

Complicating matters are Carolina (Salma Hayek, From Dusk Till Dawn), a local bookstore owner who falls for El Mariachi and Navajas (Danny Trejo, Machete), a knife-wielding assassin employed by the Colombians to take care of the Mariachi problem since Bucho seems unable to handle it.

There’s not a lot of plot to this one. Rodriguez keeps it all fairly simple and relies heavily on the adrenaline-fueled action sequences to keep the movie rolling along. There are some familiar faces here (Steve Buscemi, Cheech Marin) but for the most part the main actors were unknowns in the U.S. when Desperado hit the theaters. That worked in the movie’s favor.

Banderas, a veteran of Spanish comedies, had worked in Hollywood for a few years but had yet to have a breakthrough role, while Hayek was a Mexican telenovela star intent on becoming a success in America. Desperado was the film that gave them both that chance as it showcased Banderas’s unique charisma and Hayek’s ability to play a confident, strong-willed woman, and both went on to deservedly become major movie stars.

I would definitely be remiss in not mentioning the music. The highly influential Los Lobos set a perfect tone for the film, with guitar-heavy mariachi music seguing into dense action beats when the lead starts flying. This is one of those movies that’s impossible to imagine without its musical score, as each scene is given its own unique rendering. Bonus points go to Rodriguez for the casting of longtime Los Angeles musician and punk icon Tito Larriva as one of Bucho’s enforcers, and featuring his scoring (with his band Tito & Tarantula) on the soundtrack as well.

Quite frankly, this is one of my favorite movies, an action flick I put right up there with Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. And those films share more than a few similarities. Both were sequels to a much rawer predecessor shot by young directors looking to make their mark, and both keep things basic by drawing heavily upon old Western films for the lion’s share of their respective premises. Granted, there’s no V8 Interceptor in Desperado, but neither does Max Rockatansky lug around a guitar case full of guns.

Catch this one if you haven’t, or catch it again if it’s been awhile. This is a top-of-the-line action flick with a larger-than-life hero, a beautiful heroine who literally stops traffic, and scores of henchmen just waiting to get gunned down. It’s got my Mutant seal of approval*.

*No actual seals were used. It’s really just old newspapers duct-taped around the mason jar of toxic waste my Secret Mutant Santa gave me last Christmas.

Intermission!

• $7000! That’s pretty incredible, right? Granted, the studio’s post-production budget inflated that number considerably, but that $7000 investment still got Rodriguez on Hollywood’s radar.
• The crotch gun! Although it never saw use in the final cut of Desperado, it nevertheless made its way to Tom Savini for From Dusk till Dawn.
• Ah, man, that showdown. Campa and Quino made some heavy-duty modifications to their guitar cases.
• Campa, by the way, is played by Carlos Gallardo, who was El Mariachi in the first film.
• There was a third film in the series, but I found that one to be very “eh.” Honestly, Desperado works very well as a standalone movie.