March 12, 1993 | With El Mariachi, his already near-legendary debut feature, Robert Rodriguez establishes himself as a filmmaker of impressive self-assurance and — considering his puny budget of $7,000 and some change — astonishing resourcefulness. More important, the movie itself is a lot of low-rent, high-concept fun.
Rodriguez, a 24-year-old Austin resident who’s still a few hours shy of a University of Texas film degree, originally made El Mariachi as an extracurricular trial run, intending it to be seen nowhere outside of the Spanish-language video market.
But, through a series of events that has made Rodriguez an inspiration to independent filmmakers everywhere, his little movie (shot with a windup 16 mm camera operated by Rodriguez himself) has been blown up to 35 mm, outfitted with English subtitles, and picked up for commercial distribution by Columbia Pictures.
And it has been launched with all the publicity that comes to any film that wins the Audience Award at Robert Redford’s mecca for independent cinema, the Sundance Film Festival.
All of which would be terribly unimportant, however, if the movie itself were not entertaining. El Mariachi has, perhaps inevitably, the stark, sketchy quality that indicates a rough draft rather than a fully realized work. But it has been made with more than enough inventive skill and nimble energy to grab you, hold you, and take you for a divertingly wild ride. Rodriguez has distilled several influences (most notably, directors Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah and Walter Hill) into a single, singularly satisfying pastiche.
With more than a passing nod to George Miller’s Mad Max movies, El Mariachi is a stripped-down fable in which movie archetypes cross paths and collide. The title character, a soulful-eyed musician played by Carlos Gallardo, runs into a string of spectacularly bad luck soon after he arrives in a seedy Mexican border town in search of work. First, he finds none of the taverns wants to hire a musician. Then he finds he is the target of the local crime lord’s hit men, after he is mistaken for a vengeful fugitive (Reinol Martinez) who’s gunning for the gangster (Peter Marquardt).
And then, our hero finds himself held at knifepoint by a beautiful tavern owner (Consuelo Gomez) who suspects Mariachi is a killer, not a musician. To prove himself to her, he has to perform a beautiful ballad while she keeps the blade near where she can make the unkindest cut of all. Fortunately, the danger only serves to inspire Mariachi. “This is the best I’ve ever played,” he marvels as she lays her weapon down. “You inspire me.”
El Mariachi is a frankly derivative and slyly self-satirical melodrama, the sort of movie in which the chief villain lights his cigar by striking a match on an underling’s chin, and a minor bad guy promises, with a relatively straight face, “We’ll find him, kill him and feed him to the dogs.”
Marquardt, clearly enjoying himself as he feasts on the scenery, is the standout in the cast of amateur actors, comporting himself with traditional B-movie flamboyance. His co-stars, particularly Gallardo (the film’s co-producer) and Gomez, bring an appealing warmth and energy to their stock characters.
By the end, when Gallardo makes the final transition from hapless fall guy to mythic hero, the audience is sufficiently primed for El Mariachi 2. Which, reportedly, is just what Rodriguez wants: He intended El Mariachi as the first chapter of a trilogy, and doesn’t intend to change that plan now that his debut film has gotten wide circulation.
