So, now we come to it. Immediately after a second viewing of Desperado, I plunged into this film, mostly for the sake of my beloved Johnny Depp. I should have known that if I wasn't crazy about the first movie, I probably wasn't going to be crazy about this one either.
As it turns out, this movie was a complete yawnfest with bad storytelling and no innovation. The two cardinal rules of sequels are 1) Recycle as much as possible and 2) More is better. This movie leaned heavily on the first rule and not so much on the second. While it is impressive that Robert Rodriguez took on not only writing and directing but also editing and scoring, it wasn't enough to make me appreciate this sequel or the series as a whole.
Let's start off with the ridiculous plot. Johnny plays a rogue CIA agent looking to profit from an inevitable coup d'etat of the Mexican presidency by a drug cartel run by a man named Barillo (Willem Dafoe). In order to set a plan in motion that will not only derail the coup but also result in money for him, he goes about hiring El Mariachi, whom he learns about from some guy played by Cheech Marin. Here's my first problem. Cheech died in the first movie. He was the bartender in the bar where Buscemi (Steve Buscemi) first tells the story of El Mariachi. Yet, I guess he has a twin brother or something because he's back this time around. Was that supposed to be funny? It wasn't.
Now cut to El Mariachi and Antonio 8 years later. His hair is shorter, and he's hiding out in a village because apparently, him and Carolina, who he married and had a daughter with, caused quite a stir as some sort of deadly Bonnie and Clyde vigilantes attacking drug cartels and their members, including one run by a General Marquez. Well, the good general didn't like this, so he ended up killing poor Carolina and their young daughter. Thusly, El Mariachi is again despondent and ready to seek revenge, and lo, Agent Sands presents him with the opportunity.
It really is all downhill from there, with a good deal more recycling of things we saw in Desperado. None of the gun battles were more impressive than in Desperado, which boggles my mind. The payoff was even less satisfying. The peripheral characters, such as Billy (the guy with the dog), cluttered the whole thing up, and the acting was not good. Antonio didn't have many lines to work with, so I don't fault him. In fact, the actor who did the most talking was Johnny, and while I appreciated his quirky interpretation of this character (he even said savvy...was this released before or after the first Pirates of the Caribbean?), it didn't do anything to help this movie other than a few funny lines, such as, "Are you a Mexi-Can or a Mexi-Can't?"
All in all, I really don't know what this movie was supposed to convey other than offering a new vehicle for El Mariachi, but apparently, he can only be motivated by revenge from the death of his loved ones, which makes the character extremely uninteresting, and as I hinted at in the last entry, two-dimensional.
This movie, therefore, I rate a 3.5 because I don't think the idea was a good one, but it wasn't quite so preposterous as to be given a 3 (otherwise known as the WTF rating). In order to get a 4, the idea would have to be intriguing, even if the movie was not, and this idea was not intriguing. So, I plant it squarely in the middle (see, I am capable of giving low ratings). Obviously anything I rate a 5 or less has absolutely no chance of passing the test (unless it was Matrix Revolutions, but that's another story). In the end, I really did not enjoy this series...but, of course, I already said that. I guess I just can't say it enough.