Social Icons

El Mariachi (1992)


El Mariachi (1992)



6/10



Starring
Carlos Gallardo


Directed by Robert Rodriguez


The Mexico Trilogy, Robert Rodriguez’s brainchild, begins with El Mariachi, a movie that tells a tale of mistaken identity. Made in 1992 with a production budget of less than $8,000, Rodriguez used amateur actors and low-budget effects to bring this story to life.
Rodriguez wrote, directed, produced, and even handled the cinematography and editing for this film. Shot in Mexico and entirely in Spanish, this movie laid the groundwork for 1995’s Desperado, which starred Antonio Banderas and had a much larger budget.

The movie’s plot is straightforward, and no amount of gunfire is spared. Two men work together on a job, and one screws the other over. The one who got screwed, Azul, ends up in jail, while the betrayer, Moco, remains free.
Moco calls Azul in jail, claiming he’s sending help to break him out. Instead, he sends three hitmen to kill Azul. The plan backfires when Azul kills the hitmen, breaks out of jail, and goes after Moco, dressed in black and carrying a guitar case full of guns.

On the other side of the story, we have a young mariachi looking for work. He’s also wandering around town in black, carrying a guitar case. Moco spreads the word among his men to find and kill Azul, describing him as a man in black with a guitar case.

You can guess how the mistaken identity starts and how the mariachi is forced to pick up a gun to defend himself.

For me, Columbia Pictures, which took over the movie and invested more in post-production to make it marketable in the U.S., are the real winners. This movie spawned two financially successful sequels for them.
El Mariachi is significant for setting a Guinness World Record as the lowest-budget film to earn over a million dollars at the box office. It also paved the way for the rise of independent films in the ’90s.

Out of the three movies in the trilogy, El Mariachi has the highest critic approval rating. From my perspective, knowing the movie’s background makes me appreciate the work done on it even more. The lead actor, who plays the mariachi looking for work, delivers a performance that makes it hard to believe the cast were amateurs. Everyone involved seemed determined to stand out, and in my view, they succeeded.

This is one of the best things about independent films, the makers have absolute control of how things will be.

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Disclaimer

All images featured on this site are the property of their respective copyright owners. They are used solely for illustrative and commentary purposes under fair use principles. This site is a personal blog, unaffiliated with or endorsed by any copyright holders. If you are the copyright owner of an image featured here and wish to have it removed, please contact me directly, and I will address your request promptly.