EL MARIACHI, 1992
Movie Review

With a guitar in his hand and a price on his head, he wasn't looking for trouble...but trouble came looking for him.

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Originally made to be a straight-to-video release, El Mariachi (dir. Robert Rodriguez) was shown at some film festivals and won four awards, including The Sundance Film Festival Audience Award. Since then, the $7,000 budget film had grossed over $2,000,000 in the USA, spawned two sequels with Columbia Pictures Corporation and made the director an iconic auteur filmmaker.

The story opens up with a prisoner, Azul (Reinol Martinez), talking to his old drug lord boss, Moco (Peter Marquardt), who both want to kill the other, with Azul wanting to kill Moco for not giving a promised profit and Moco wants to kill Azul for taking out his men with a guitar case filled with weapons. Azul manages to kill Moco’s hired men and escape from prison.

This is when we then see El Mariachi (Carlos Gallardo) walking into a small Mexican town to try and get work so that he can become a great musician like his elders in the family. El Mariachi is then thrown into a twisted situation when Moco’s other hired men mistake him for Azul and El Mariachi takes refuge into a bar. The bar acts as his safe house and the audience then sees a non-sexual romance blossoming between him and Domino (Consuelo Gomez) the bar owner, who acts as the sensible and understanding character as opposed to the male characters who cause destruction within the town. The musician is now on a mission to try and proove his innocence, while being heavily involved in the battle between a criminal with powerful weapons and a drug lord.

Carlos Gallardo, who plays El Mariachi, has worked alongside the director before on a number of short films and after the release of this film, he has starred in a number of different films, including Bravo (dir. Lorena David), Grindhouse (dir. Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez) and Single Action (dir. Carlos Gallardo). Though the actor may not be as famous as most actors who worked with Rodriquez, it’s great to see him getting a piece of success from this supposed non-existent film.

The director’s story of how he became the famed director he is today is one of the most well known stories within the film industry and it’s amazing that it started with this film.

After being shown at the Sundance Film Festival and Columbia distributing it across American cinemas, Rodriguez went on to make the sequel of El Mariachi, Desperado (dir. Robert Rodriguez). There were a few changes to this film compared with his previous attempt, mainly being the budget and the leading actor. The budget of the film was $7,000,000 and managed to gross over $25,000,000 in the USA alone with the leading actor being changed for Antonio Banderas, who then previously starred in films as smaller characters.

Robert Rodriguez has made some of the most successful films within the last ten years and also made the third and final instalment of his Mexican Trilogy, Once Upon A Time In Mexico (dir. Robert Rodriguez), which also did well in the box office. His list of success includes The Spy Kids Trilogy, Sin City, Grindhouse and his most recent outing, Shorts.

El Mariachi is one of those rare films where people really have to see it to take in what the director tried to achieve with so little money and crew members. Truly, film students should see this, as well as anyone who’s interested in how one of the most famous filmmakers began their career.

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El Mariachi