Cast:
Carlos Gallardo ("El Mariachi"), Consuelo Gómez (Dominó), Peter Marquardt (Mauricio "Moco"), Reinol Martínez ("Azul"), Jaime de Hoyos ("Bigotón"), Ramiro Gómez (The Waiter), Jesús López Viejo (The Clerk), Luis Baro (Dominó's Assistant), Óscar Fabila (The Boy) Written and Directed by Robert Rodriguez (#1193 - Alita: Battle Angel and #1903 - From Dusk till Dawn)
Review:
"Mariachi wasn’t supposed to work out that well. I hadn’t really set a firm plan down. I didn’t expect that to be the movie to get out and make everything. It was in Spanish, it was very low-budget, it was designed to teach me how to make a movie. I had planned to make three of them at the same budget level, that’s why the movie ended the way it did. I was just going to make three in one year. I was hoping maybe the third one would be good enough to get me work on a real film, not be the one that went all over the world. I never expected that to be released, much less for people to see it. It’s good to map out a really decent plan that actually makes sense, that has opportunity for you to learn, because if it takes off from the start like Mariachi did, then that’s good too, but if not, you have to realize it was a learning experience. You have to keep learning and keep making movies."
Admittedly, it never hurts to pick a success story. This was a movie that was made on a budget of $7,000 that served as the feature film debut of its director Robert Rodriguez. The San Antonio native actually was interested in film when his salesman father got him a VCR (with accompanying camera) as a kid. He couldn't attend the film program at the University of Texas at Austin, but he made short films on the side of studying at the College of Communication. It was in 1991 that he made the 16mm short Bedhead (1991) that attracted him to the idea of making a filmmaking career, complete with funds raised from participating in medical testing studies. The movie was shot Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila right near the border in Mexico. If you watch the DVD extras, you get a bit of just how one can really make a movie with little to no film crew: he shot it silent and had actors who weren't in the shot to help out while being quoted as only using "24 rolls of film". Moving shots were done...via wheelchair. This is the kind of movie that hears critics about its production and decides, yes, let us cast them in small parts (specifically, the hotel owner and bartender were played by local newscasters). The movie was aimed for the Spanish-language home video market but the interest was not particularly big there. Instead, through a round of looking around in certain agencies and distributors, it wound up at Columbia Pictures acquiring the movie for a release that took money to spiff up (so about over ten times the amount to make the movie in the first place). In 1995, Rodriguez wrote both a book about the making of the movie (called Rebel Without a Crew*) and followed El Mariachi up with Desperado, which had Antonio Banderas take over as "El Mariachi"; in 2003, the "Mexico Trilogy" concluded with Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003)
Sure, it could be pegged as one of various genres and still feel familiar, whether that is in action, neo-noir, or, well, a Western. But it is a particularly familiar movie that still proves an efficient one with a committed director who made a fun movie with that shows its playfulness with a type of scrappy grit that money can't buy, at least for 81 minutes at least. It has enough time to have a song and some general interest in making worthwhile entertainment out of what could've just been goofy meandering. Gallardo mostly is a producer nowadays, but he clearly was a key to making El Mariachi more than just a demo reel, mostly because he makes for a solid everyman. He isn't just mugging it for goofs or stoic boredom, he sells it in a certain type of dignity that is shaken with riveting interest, where even the bumbling for the chases (they kept outtakes in the movie, watch how the first chase goes) is part of the charm, right next to the bathroom sequence at least, where the tension is handled with worthwhile skill in both song and, well, squirming. Curiously, you have a group of unknowns with Gomez, de Hoyos, Marquant, and Martinez, who each appeared in Desperado but have not appeared in a name role since. Marquant happened to be involved in the same drug testing that Rodriguez was involved in. He could not actually speak Spanish (fine by Rodriguez, judging by this), so you get a performance on cue cards that is certainly interesting. Marquardt reprised his role for Desperado but he was mostly busy in video game producing (specifically for Ion Storm) before he died in 2014 at the age of 50. Marquardt may be on the phone for a chunk of his lines, but I do think it is a curiosity more than just a gimmick to see a certain type of stilted lines from this type of adversary, one who believes he has the objects he deserves. When you think about it, every character might as well be playing pretend with themselves, whether that involves how we see the character of Martinez in terms of "hiding out" or with Gomez in "assertive freedom". The climax is swift in its simplicity that I respect for just closing things out and shattering the dream that comes in new cities and new people. As a whole, El Mariachi is a neat accomplishment for its director, riding a rough road of budgetary limitations to strengths in gritty commitment that will be right up one's alley in raw curiosity that you just have to respect.
Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.
*In 2019, Rodriguez made Red 11, which was inspired by his experiences in being a guinea pig for drug testing.
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