El Mariachi
Robert Rodriguez has been referred to as the ‘Mexican Tarantino’ in the past. There are definitely points of comparison, their mutual love for gritty action, blends of culture and ridiculous violence, their history of collaboration and their mutual success as breakout film-makers with low-budget films. Rodriguez is perhaps far more worthy of congratulation in that field than Tarantino though, it’s one thing to pen a brilliant screenplay and then direct a brilliant crime thriller off of the back of it but to venture out into the Mexican desert with an inexperienced cast and crew and virtually no money, only to return with a legendary action movie? That’s something else. Ladies and gentlemen, El Mariachi.
Rodriguez raised a paltry $7,000 to make the film, a substantial fraction of which he raised by participating in experimental drug trials (yep, that’s really a thing). He shot it in a small town on the Rio Grande and actually cast numerous locals in minor roles, sometimes to save money and sometimes to curry favor. If you ever get the time, go through the film’s DVD extras, they provide a real insight into what it was like making a film on a shoestring budget in the early 90s. The story is a simple case of mistaken identity, a hardened criminal with a fairly large bone to pick breaks out of jail armed with a guitar case filled with death, but owing to a break-down in communication a local jobbing mariachi with a guitar case full of guitar is mistaken for the aggressor. It’s a funny, unpredictable, relentless action movie not in the least bit marred by monetary constraints. It was later succeeded by Desperado (awesome) and Once Upon a Time in Mexico (mehhh) but El Mariachi will likely always remain the most significant, as much a success story as a great film.
Amores Perros
Another kickstarter to a trilogy that ventured into English-language territory, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Amores Perros (‘Love’s a Bitch’) is an enthralling mangle of interwoven stories about life on different levels of the social infrastructure in Mexico City. The three stories are all tied together by a severe car accident, the only time in the film that all the main characters are in the same place at the same time. One story follows a young man in a working-class household who enters into criminal activity to try and make a better life for his abused sister-in-law, whilst the second centers on a young actress/model in a tumultuous relationship with an older man who left his family behind for her and the third is about an elderly squatter who is asked to reprise his work as a hit man one last time.
It’s a stark, powerful emotional drama about the limitations of love and the harsh truths of violence that tries to paint a complete picture of life in Mexico’s capital, top to bottom. It’s not a pretty one. If you’re anything like me and have an ingrained affection for dogs you’ll find it particularly hard going, since dog fighting (and dogs in general) play a very central role in the story. The film was actually criticized for this, suggesting that it was just too brutal, but dog fighting is a very real aspect of underground gambling in that part of the world and if you want to tell a story about that world, you can’t edit things out, Iñárritu absolutely understands that. Amores Perros remains to this day one of the most successful Mexican films ever made and it’s easy to see why.
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