Once Upon a Time in Mexico

Tonight’s excuse for not posting is having been to the cinema to see Once Upon a Time in Mexico. I’m afraid it was a bit of a disappointment all round. I know the plotting isn’t really the point of this sort of film, but if you’re not going to have a coherent plot then you can at least compensate by staging your action scenes well. There were plenty of individual moments which looked tremendously cool here, but they weren’t strung together in a way that made sense. Also, the movie’s physics engine needs some debugging: in real life someone who has been shot will very rarely fly through the air for some thirty feet, but it happens pretty much every time the good guys are the ones doing the shooting here.

There were a few good points. First of all Danny Trejo and Rubén Blades gave terrific supporting performances, and Antonio Banderas may not have been terribly convincing but he did look fantastic. As did Salma Hayek, but as she’s only in the film for about five minutes in a few flashback scenes it’s a bit of a cheat for the producers to feature her so prominently in the film’s posters and trailers. It’s especially unfair given that Hayek looks so good in those few scenes she’s in. Eva Mendes, who plays the main female role in the other ninety minutes of the film, should count herself fortunate that she didn’t have to share any scenes with Salma Hayek, because The Goddess Salma would have made even the curvaceous Ms Mendes look plain, not to say downright frumpy.

As for Johnny Depp, his eccentric performance as a manipulative CIA agent was certainly entertaining at times, but only in an I-don’t-know-what-the-hell-he’s-going-to-do-next-and-I-doubt-he-does-either way. It’s a wildly eccentric performance, but it’s distracting and annoying in a way that his similarly idiosyncratic turn in Pirates of the Caribbean wasn’t.

Perhaps in the end this just wasn’t a film for me. If you really enjoyed the first two stories Rodriguez told about El Mariachi then you should certainly see this final(?) instalment, but be prepared to come away disappointed. I’m not sure the first two films demanded a sequel, and certainly not so long after the last instalment.

Incidentally, one of tonight’s trailers was the one for The Return of the King which I posted about yesterday. Having seen it on a big screen with really good sound, I’m even more excited about this year’s Xmas treat from that nice Mr Jackson.