Disappointing `Once Upon a Time' brings trilogy to a kitschy close
I'm in no position to comment on Robert Rodriguez's mental health, but his new movie is certifiably bananas. The cameras in "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" lap at people's feet like a dog. The guns, when cocked in unison, make it sound like Savion Glover just walked into the saloon. And in case you were hoping for a drop of sanity, the cast includes Mickey Rourke, Willem Dafoe, Danny Trejo, Johnny Depp, and a chihuahua.
A movie with that many freaks and creeps should be a lot more exciting than this one actually is. Dafoe's slithering vocals acquire campy Latin contours, and besieged Rodriguez regulars Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek swing from a motel window like a schlock-movie Tarzan and Jane. Rodriguez serves his action sequences like a salad with a lot more dressing than lettuce.
Resuming his "Desperado" role as a vigilante mariachi, Banderas seems, well, fatigued. In the last year, he's starred in an HBO movie, a hit Broadway show, and two Rodriguez movies, this in addition to fulfilling his ongoing duties as Melanie Griffith's husband. He's as big a workaholic as writer, director, editor, photographer, and composer Rodriguez is an overachiever.
The exhaustion is mutual. The plot practically demands that you board a tour bus to navigate it. El Mariachi (Banderas) is lured out of seclusion by Sands (Depp), a crooked CIA agent who recruits him to stop the drug lord Barillo (Dafoe) from assassinating Mexico's president. (Not you, Vicente Fox, but a mangier, older dude.) But Banderas seems more like a side player in Rodriguez's spaghetti melodrama. And none of the other characters registers as more than kitschy marionettes. You want more of Trejo's gnarly henchman and Eva Mendes's bad-girl DEA operative. Hayek's participation is especially inexplicable. She exists only in a kooky back story that amounts to reenactments of her work in the previous installment.
By the time Banderas hires two musicians -- Marco Leonardi and the singer Enrique Iglesias -- for vigilante backup, you just want to tie a tourniquet around the casting office.
Depp is the real pleasure, and there's definitely not enough of him. I had a better time watching the actor here than in "Pirates of the Caribbean." He plays Rodriguez's shenanigans for cool irony while nearly everyone around is blowing a gasket.
After this summer's "Spy Kids 3-D," Rodriguez might be the first director in movie history to complete two trilogies in one year. But both pictures feel as if he pulled all-nighters to make them. "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" has an even stranger delirium than that latest, trippy "Spy Kids" episode. It's a grisly, chuckling cartoon made on shots of tequila, Red Bull, and Sergio Leone.
Kids, don't try that at home. Save it for film school, where you get advice on how to pull such a stunt.
** 1/2
Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com.
