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The new movie is Once Upon A Time In Mexico. Shot gorgeously on digital video, it is electric with cartoon violence. So, despite the body count, don't confuse this with trashy movies that serve up buckets of blood to spice their fight-to-the-death scenes. Nor is it at all realistic.
Instead, as the title suggests, Once Upon A Time In Mexico is Rodriguez's bemused answer to the Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns that culminated with The Good, The Bad And The Ugly. The stylized violence created by Italian director Sergio Leone in those flicks is taken to even greater extremes in the El Mariachi series, especially in this one.
Nevertheless, it is also useful to know that the new offering from Rodriguez, a Texas Mexican-American who celebrates his cultural heritage, is absolutely not for children. Instead, take them to his Spy Kids series, also a trilogy.
As for the story in Once Upon A Time, a few things have happened in the past nine years. Our hero is still the iconic Man With No Name. For his musical talent, he is known as El Mariachi or even as El, which means "The," an indication of the dry wit in play here.
Heartthrob Spaniard Antonio Banderas is back to reprise what he did in Desperado but with a larger cast of key support players to flesh out the plotting.
Eye candy Hayek returns as the heart-stopping love interest who is just as heroic and as dangerous as her beau -- and more deadly than a scorpion. But, in flashbacks that often confusingly show what has happened since the end of Desperado, we learn she is already a murder victim (but that did not happen in Desperado itself, as I mistakenly reported in Sunday's Showcase feature).
In any case, El Mariachi, now moodier and darker than ever, is out to avenge the murder of both her and their child.
Rodriguez has invented a host of eccentric characters, some played by actors seen in other roles in Desperado, some of them new. So Danny Trejo and Cheech Marin are re-born in new guises while fresh faces such Marco Leonardi (Like Water For Chocolate), Ruben Blades (Mr. Cool), Willem Dafoe (as a Mexican drug mobster), singer Enrique Iglesias (he's passable) and even outcast Mickey Rourke (back from his own abyss) have key roles.
None is more dynamic than Johnny Depp, who shamelessly and enthusiastically chews up the scenery as a rogue U.S. agent who gets involved in the movie's elaborate and often ridiculous political and crime plot.
The three-armed Depp (believe me, it makes sense on screen) is an absolute hoot. His friendship with a young Mexican lad and the tragic fate of his eyes figure into the lurid plot, too. Sound absurd? Not half as much as this surreal explosion of a movie.
(This film is rated 18-A)