El Mariachi

Original International Movie Poster.

Ages before Robert Rodríguez became Robert Rodríguez, he was another average B class film maker looking for the deal of his life. His earliest attempt at film making could have been just that,  an early attempt who would become a part of the uncountable thousands of B movies made for Home Video and destined to oblivion in the darkest corner of a cheap video store in a small town. Fortunately, that wasn't the case. Columbia Pictures saw something in Rodríguez humble beginnings.

First of all, Rodríguez is a man who through sacrifice has become the film maker we now worship. He offered himself to be a part of an American laboratory willing to pay $7,000,000 in cash to those willing to become human experiments. Soon after he got the money, he and some friends willing to join him on his first major experience started shooting, producing & acting the film all by themselves. So it was all some sort of family  business.  To save precious money Rodríguez was smart enough to cut a few portions from entire scenes, to avoid starting from scratch on every take. He also hadn't a lot of cameras, so using his wisdom he panned and zoomed some takes as if they were shot with different cameras, smart, very smart.

If you weren't grown enough to watch this flick in the early 90's I definitely would recommend you to watch the latest films Rodríguez instead of this humble debut, which lacks the thousands of dollars in production, special effects and acting his later films have.

Azul & Domino.

Originally filmed as a silent movie, and then having the Spanish language added, El Mariachi, is a movie that deserves to be watched on its original language, no dubbed version can equal the language intention of the Mexican Spanish actors speak on this flick, so be ready to read the English subtitles, and laugh your ass out when listening to the poor Spanish Mauricio, El Moco speaks. By the way Moco, means Snot in English, hahaha.

The story has it, on the one hand an unknown guy who plays mariachi songs is looking for a job as the musician he is. On the other hand we have another mexican known by the alias of Azul, a tough guy who's looking for the money Mauricio El Moco owns him from an earlier job. Azul, pissed off with El Moco is set to get rid of every henchman El Moco has, to of course, finally make his way to the big boss.

Our real Mariachi has no choice.

Azul.

The problem is this Azul guy goes killing people with a guitar case filled with guns, and soon as El Moco finds out, our innocent Mariachi is mistaken by the killer just because he also has a guitar case! and so begins the madness!

Our buddy Mariachi is helped by Domino, a girl who owns a bar. She allows him to stay in her bar for a few days until the missunderstanding is over. Soon there will be plenty of blood in Azul's hand, and yeah, our Mariachi will have to carry Azul's guitar case to save his ass from El Moco's henchmen...

This movie has nothing to do with the world famous sequel Desperado, though the story is also about a Mariachi they're very different movies, but Rodríguez thought it would be fit to make a third movie called Once Upon a Time in Mexico as the ending act of El Mariachi's trilogy. 

El Mariachi, compared to any other film Rodríguez has made, looks like and feels like a very amateur film, it has its strenghts but, just don't expect to find an absolut masterpice here. The special effects are very simple, the blood isn't close to gore, the acting isn't close to acting, and even the music score isn't the best Rodríguez has done, but hey! it is his first movie, and despite the technical flaws is a very entertaining story, where we find lots of action and suspense.

Here's the movie trailer: