Movies - Once Upon a Time in Mexico

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	Movies - Once Upon a Time in Mexico

Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003) is an action film by Robert Rodriguez and the final film in the "Mariachi Trilogy", which includes El Mariachi
and Desperado
. Antonio Banderas reprises his role as El Mariachi. The film also stars Johnny Depp, Salma Hayek, Willem Dafoe, Enrique Iglesias, Mickey Rourke, Eva Mendes and Rubén Blades.

Tagline: The time has come.

Although the film received mostly positive reviews, it was criticized for reducing El Mariachi (Antonio Banderas) to an almost secondary character in his own trilogy, and also for having an unnecessarily convoluted and confusing plot.

Trilogy 'problems'

This film is presented as the concluding chapter of Rodriguez's "Mariachi Trilogy", however at face value there are two problems with viewing the films as a linear trilogy, as one would do with The Godfather or Back to the Future films:

1. Desperado is often considered a re-make of El Mariachi, not a direct sequel, this arises from the facts that if Desperado were taken as the 2nd part of a linear trilogy, some inconsistancies arise, and that in his commentary on the Desperado DVD, Rodriguez discusses the fact that he originally wanted to make the film as a remake of El Mariachi for an American audience, as opposed to a sequel. Rodriguez, in the same commentary, claims that he decided to make the film as a sequel, using flashbacks to explain necessary plot information from prior to the events in the film. Nonetheless, there is some amount of confusion in regard to specific plot points, such as how the character of Bucho actually links back to the drug-peddling consortium that killed El Mariachi's girlfriend in the first film.

2. At least two actors whose characters died in Desperado re-appear in "Once". Why this occurs is never explained during the movie, and it makes this film difficult to view as a sequel to Desperado rather than an entirely separate fable that happens to involve the "El Mariachi" character. Rodriguez has stated that he wanted to use those actors again, and choose to do so despite their "other" characters having been killed in Desperado. Similarly, the actor who played the El Mariachi character in the first film returns as a different character in Desperado. However, many attribute this problem to the accused inability, within critics of such a perceived problem, to accept actors as different characters within a trilogy. Opinion is divided on this subject; the problem is, truthfully, not a plot-based one.

Cast

El Mariachi ... Antonio Banderas
Carolina ... Salma Hayek
CIA Agent Sands ... Johnny Depp
Billy Chambers ... Mickey Rourke
Ajedruz ... Eva Mendes
Cucuy ... Danny Trejo
Lorenzo ... Enrique Iglesias
Fideo ... Marco Leonardi
Belini ... Cheech Marin
FBI Agent Jorge Ramirez ... Rubén Blades
Armando Barillo ... Willem Dafoe
General Emiliano Marquez ... Gerardo Vigil
Nicholas ... Julio Oscar Mechoso

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Once Upon a Time in Mexico ]

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Movies - Once Upon a Time in Mexico

Trilogy 'problems'

Cast

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