Unlike Desperado, the second in this series, this movie (the third in the series) captures a bit more of what made El Mariachi, Robert R’s low budget wonder, such a hit. Then too, as in the Sergio Leone films that are its obvious inspiration, plot is not a big item here. Suffice to say that it’s set in Mexico, and involves good guys, bad guys, good bad guys and real bad bad guys – all working together and at cross purposes simultaneously. I say “guys’ advisedly since this a male driven flick that has only two female characters.
The interesting thing, for me, is the structure of the film. The first half is characterized by a bit of character development but in all cases such development is associated with secondary characters. Antonio Banderas, the ostensible lead, is wooden and says little. Salma Hayek is simple eye-candy whose lack of lines make Arnold S. seem loquacious. By contrast, Johnny Depp’s corrupt CIA character comes across as an appealing, to the extent that a murderous psychotic becomes appealing, and we get to know Cheech Marin, Willem Dafoe (the obligatory head of a Mexican drug cartel), Reuben Blades (retired FBI agent living in Mexico), etc. Most reviews that I’ve seen suggest that Depp steals the show; my own view is that the Blades character gives him a run for his money.
In the second half of the film, all pretense at character development evaporates. There’s one plot twist involving a Mexican woman on the local drug squad team, but it’s minor. Basically, what happens that the choreographed violence (and it is truly BEAUTIFULLY choreographed) in the first half of the film comes to take over. As in the spaghetti westerns, only a few characters are left standing. It doesn’t really matter which.
Terminator 3 - Rise of the Machines
Oops. It seems that there are some aspects of the future that couldn’t be changed even given the events of T2. Bummer, civilization-wise. T3 does contain a few plot twists with respect to the Terminator story line, and for that reason will be of mild interest to diehard fans. Still, in the end the good guys spend the whole movie running away from the bad Terminator babe (who is even more laconic than Arnold-still-the-good-terminator guy - honest!), and never get the chance to do anything clever.
This is an outstanding movie. In 1846, two rival gangs - one Nativist, one Irish - engage in a brutal, but ritualized, encounter to establish who controls their section of New York. The nativist leader, Bill the Butcher (who is a butcher; played by Daniel Day Lewis), kills the Irish leader (Liam Neeson). The latter's son is sent to a religious reform school, grows up, and returns as "Amsterdam" (Leonardo Di Caprio) for revenge by apprenticing himself to Bill and his gang (still in control in 1863). Along the way Amsterdam gets romantically and sexually involved with a working thief, played by Cameron Diaz.
The first two thirds of the movie tells the tale of Amsterdam and Bill. It turns out that Bill is a more complex character than you think, and indeed - when the climactic "revenge" moment occurs, you're almost surprised that Amsterdam moves as he does. This part of the movie excels by creating a sense of lower class (white) society in NY at the time. True, some of the efforts here are a bit pedantic; Di Caprio's character, for example, often gives voiceover "lists" that provide capsule summaries of the different types of thieves, the different types of gang, etc. On the other hand, the movies unquestionably conveys a sense of place and time that seems both familiar and yet simultaneously exotic. But more than anything else, it is DDL's performance that raises this part of the movie to something way above average.
The last part of the movie is really about something else. Yes, we seen the two gangs once again meet in ritual combat. But this is told against the backdrop of a little known episode in US history: the NY Draft Riots. The Civil War, remember, rages, and the dead are regularly being sent back in their coffins by the thousands. The Federal Government, not strongly supported by the Nativists or the Irish we see, imposes a Draft - but with this proviso: for $300, a sum well beyond the means of the lower class, you can buy your way out. When names are drawn, roving mobs go on a rampage in NY. In the movie, it lasts a day or two; in reality, the riots lasted for weeks. How the riots are judged depends on what you focus on. Focusing in the innocent black bystanders that were sometimes attacked (noted by the movie), we must condemn the rioters. Focusing on the riots as reaction to a Draft that sent the poor, but not the rich, to die on battlefields far away (a point the movie makes clearly), our reaction is more sympathetic. Certainly, when disciplined and armed Federal Troops massacre the rioters (as happened), the movie's sympathies are more with the victims than the troops.