Hey folks, Harry here... I saw, months ago, a pretty rough non-color timed print of ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO. Since then, Robert has shot some extra footage and scored the film, so now... Well now I'm dying to see the finished film. Currently Rodriguez is up in New York doing press for the film, and soon he'll be in Venice to do the Venice Film Festival with the movie out of competition. I do want to warn people about taking Leone into the theater with you when you see ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO. This isn't really that type of film, that tone of film. This is very much a film in the spirit of DESPERADO laid out on a bigger canvas. Personally, for me... the biggest weakness of the film is that Johnny Depp is so fucking cool that I just wanted to see a movie all about his character... which would be like if you saw THE GOOD, THE BAD and THE UGLY and you loved Eli Wallach's character so much that you wish Eastwood would just get off the screen.... even though Eastwood was fine. BEWARE of SPOILERS below... some things you might not want to know are included below... beware...
Hi Harry,
I´ve just been in a press screening of „Once upon a Time in Mexico“ in Germany, and I thought I let you know what I think of it.
First of all let me say that I am a huge fan of Robert Rodriguez and his previous Mariachi movies. I`ve even read his book like 3 times. So I had pretty high expectations walking into this movie. And Rodriguez did almost everything right!
Well it`s basically a lot like Desperado, it`s just much more epic. That is good, and that is bad also:
The Good:
Well most of the movie is good. It is beautiful with great widescreen shots, very similar to Sergio Leone`. It is very stylish. Basically the whole movie is about style and being cool. And it has some of the coolest dialogue I´ve heard in a long time.
The Cast of the movie is also superb. (well not all of it, but I´ll get to that later) Johnny Depp is brilliant. He is almost cooler than Antonia Banderas. William Dafoe is as great as he always was, Mickey Rourke is pretty good, too. Cheech is… well he`s Cheech and that`s all we want, aint it? And of course Danny Trejo is just cool.
The Action of the movie is really enjoyable. I don`t think I´ve seen this stylish, cool, and fun kind of action since the last good John Woo movie. And it is as much over the top as it was in Desperado.
The one liners are great. Especially the ones by Johnny Depp. (What are you, are you MexiCAN or are you MexiCANT?).
And there are a lot of little things that you might already have seen, or that makes you think about something in the other movies…
The Bad
Well Enrique Iglesias isn`t really as bad as you might think. But for me, I just don`t understand what he is doing in this movie. For me he looks like a weak, crying guy singing stuff like “hero” which I absolutely hate. I mean he doesn`t work as someone shooting 50 other guys. Perhaps it`s just me, because I don`t like him, but I don`t think he should`ve been in this movie.
Rodriguez is trying to tell virtually the same story as before. But he is trying to tell it as an epic. Banderas is still trying to take revenge, but this time he is also trying to save Mexico. This could have been great… but for me the story isn`t very well told. There is a lot of people and a lot of conspiracy in it, but most of it really isn`t important. Basically the whole Johnny Depp character isn`t important, but he is so cool in this movie that it`s ok. In my opinion he is trying to hard to get to much in it to make it epic. The result is that you don`t really care too much about the story, but about the beauty, and the cool side of the movie.
The Ugly
Well there isn`t really anything ugly in this movie. One might say that Enrique is ugly, but you`d probably get killed by a thousand screaming female fans…
Overall I have to say that I enjoyed this movie a lot! It could have been better if he`d taken better care of the story, but it`s still a great movie, and one that I am looking forward to own on DVD.
LikeMike
Here's a slightly more critical look at ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO...
Hey Harry. I'm new to writing to the site, but I check it out everyday!
I got to see ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO last night at the kips bay theatre in NY.
Let's call this Once upon a movie that could have been better,
I was extremely stoked to see this movie when I 1st read about it, I mean come on, the cast, Rodriguez, etc... it looked awsome. Then came that cool poster, then came the trailer, and it just got me more excited to see the film. When I came out of the film I couldn't believe how disapointed I was. I mean certain scenes of the movie rocked, but all in all I think I went in expecting to be given a virtual blow job or something, because I left less then satisfied.
So anyways, 1st I run into my friend in the mall and he says he has tickets for this thing, it's all to good to be true. Some movie research group or something was doing the screening and the line was all the way down the block.
So I walk into this thing, and after an entirnity for it to start, it comes on and the sound is off, Johnny Depp is talking and nothing is coming out of his mouth.
So they restart the film after a huge amount of boos from the front, and the game is on.
1st of all Entertainment Weekly was right about the buzz that depp steals this movie, he does. Every scene he is in the audience kind of perked up from there seats to see what he was going to say. Rodriguez wrote the part kind of like he was the main character even, he starts the movie with him, and almost ends the movie with him and all the comedic parts are with him, so why the hell wasn't this movie the johnny depp walks around mexico movie? Because that would have been entertaining. I really liked depp in this movie, he has a good time and you could see it, his character is a blast to with his
#SPOILERS....
Whole notion that you have to shoot the cook that cooks the best pork in mexico to keep the country level was fucking hilarious and his "skull fucking" comment to cheech marin was funny to. But the thing that really bothered me was the scene after Mr. Depp gets his eyes gorged out, by his double crossing girlfriend Eva "sugar butt" Mendes, and is walking around the street blood pouring out from under his sunglasses and he is just like "oh, i can't see." People are going to be arguing over this scene and it's believeability. But, that's when i said this is kinda stupid, that would hurt right, and he is just walking around the street like la dee da? But then again to take this seriously would be a crime. I think i wanted this movie to be a serious action flick and what i got was a fantasy movie with unbelieveable scenes to go with unbelieveable characters.
End SPOILERS.#
But moving on from my complaints which are small, but are there...
MORE SPOILERS
The action scenes are GREAT!
With Antonio Banderas looking great as ever as El, shoots a mother fucker, he shoots them! They fly across the screen. The scenes with Antonio and Salma are good to, but those are all flashbacks anyway, which bring me to my next complaint which is Salma is advertised to be in this movie as a main character bull shit!
She's only in flashbacks! For like 15 minutes of the thing she's there and she's beautiful but fuck i wanted more of her.
Antonio's whole story was kind of weak to, it's a basic revenge plot to kill the general that killed his daughter and his wife, but we never see the general that much anyway, but loved when antonio shot both his knee caps and bop, his legs break off, loved that shit.
Rodriguez you're the man, but I felt this was kind of a let down, loved certain parts of it, was bored during others.
Thanks for an ok night out though.
It's still worth seeing, but I had my hopes WAY WAY to high.
Harry if you use this call me THE REVOLUTION.
