Rodriguez does it again!!

Before getting this DVD, I had already had the benefit of watching 'Desperado' and I already thought it as a wonderful film. I had heard about 'El Mariachi', but had heard different stories. The first being that 'El Mariachi' was made on a majorly small budget and that 'Desperado' was just a remake, and the second was that it was the first of a trilogy, with 'Desperado' as the sequel and 'Once Upon A Time In Mexico' as the final part. I haven't yet seen 'Once Upon A Time In Mexico' so I don't know if it's totally true, but the others are related.

The story is the stuff of pulp novels, old TV Westerns and Victorian melodrama. The mariachi is a harmless romantic who only wants to sing, but people start shooting at him. He defends himself, while trying to figure out why he is the center of attention. A sexy barmaid named Domino (Consuelo Gomez) believes his story and befriends him, and before long they are falling in love, which adds another complication: Domino is the object of the local warlord's unrequited lust, and the warlord's men have confused the mariachi with the other man in black.

'El Mariachi' is already gathering a legend around it, about how Rodriguez sold his body to medical science to raise money to buy film, and wrote the screenplay while working as a guinea pig for cholesterol medication.

'Desperado' is an obvious sequel, and obviously budgeted alot better, but the film hasn't quite got the charm of the first. The dark humour isn't quite as slick, but Rodriguez manages to pull it off well.