Review of Desperado (1995) by Michael Y — 19 May 2011

Caught between drug deals, knive throwings, lots of explosions, hot lovemaking and a fuck load of gunfighting, Robert Rodriguez's revenge story is full of violence, and even more style.

The 2nd movie of Roddriguez's Mariachi Trilogy, Deperado directly follows the events after the first movie. El Mariachi is back. The legend of a guitar case carrying Mexican gunfighter has taken another form, and he's still out for revenge to kill the drug boss who killed the woman he loved. There are many dangers ahead for him as he has to kill a lot of people, survive a lot of attacks on his life, and to save the life of a beautiful woman to find the man he wants to kill. Desperado is an excellent follow up for Rodriguez's very first movie. And the story is so interesting too. The story of a man who was no more than a mariachi who gets pulled into a life of crime and gunfighting violence because of a case of mistaken identity, now becomes the man people thought he was, and is kicking a lot of ass! Desperado might not be a stroke of genius in it's writing, but its sure as hell hilarious and entertaining. With on hell of an all star cast including Cheech Marin, Steve Busceni, Danny Trejo, and even Quentin Tarantino saying the greatest joke of all time, Desperado is an action packed thrillride.

Robert Rodriguez's style is also seen at it's best in Desperado. The gunfights are as over-the-top and unrealistic as they are incredibly creative and thoroughly well executed. Blood splatters everywhere, explosions everywhere. Yep, this is a good movie. But the way it is filmed is incrediple and exciting. Definitly the way this movie captures it's violence and the cinematography make it stand out as a great action movie. The movie has a pretty simple location, mostly filmed in a bar on the poor streets of a small town. There's also some great little visual moments, like the look of the toilet, the blood stain across the wall, there's just plenty of small little details about Desperado that makes it look cool. And the scene between Antonio Banderas and Selma Hayek...WOWZA!

Desperado is an exciting action movie with a great cast. But no one could have made it look better than Robert Rodriguez. His creativity and style pushes the possibilities of how modern action movies could look like, and makes his films fun to watch.