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Certain critics may find it in good taste to denounce Desperado, a Hollywood production par excellence, to the benefit of El Mariachi, an ingenious do-it-yourself indie., an ingenious do-it-yourself indie. The latter, however, only officiated like a draft, an outline of Desperado, a reincarnated spaghetti western transposed to a contemporary world with a touch of Hollywood glamour. Having understood that he could not avoid needless repetition by plunging his character into a similar situation Rodriguez, like Sergio Leone in For A Few Dollars More, (moreover to whom he pays homage), introduces a new character played by Johnny Depp, who discreetly takes over the screen while being used as catalyst for the title character. Just like John Carpenter in the underestimated Escape From LA, he brushes the satire of his own work and openly proclaims his attachment to B films—the opening film credits signal that this is a "Robert Rodriguez flick" (the term "flick" being generally associated with genre cinema). Based on an idea suggested to him by Quentin Tarantino to conclude his trilogy on the Leone model (from whom he gets the title), Rodriguez directs a neo-spaghetti western (or is it a burrito western??) that he places in the sub-category of the revolutionary western. While he makes a pastiche of his two previous works, the homage to the genre is respectful. Beyond the abundance of sinister-looking guys, flashbacks and orchestrated duels, one finds the use of gadgets (Depp's extra arm), a gimmick of the Sabatta (with Lee van Cleef) and Sartana series, a latent cynicism, as well as political aspiration—the Mexican Revolution, a popular uprising and the not very scrupulous intrigues of the CIA that unquestionably recall such classics of the sub-genre such as Damiano Damiani 's Quién Sabe?, Sergio Corbucci 's Companerõs or Leone's uneven A Fistful of Dynamite. One also notices a certain distance with respect to El Mariachi's character, a feeling of transparency that is a reflect of this quasi-ghostly and mythical incarnation, in the tradition of High Plains Drifter, Pale Rider and Strangers Gundown which inspired Clint Eastwood for those two films. As for Depp's character, thrown into blindness in a final duel to finish on his knees and riddled with bullets, he visually recalls The Crow, but even more so it's Silence, the deaf and dumb killer played by Jean-Louis Trintignant in The Great Silence, to whom Rodriguez directly alludes (some will probably see an allusion to the Zatôichi series redone by Takeshi Kitano). Curiously, like the recent Terminator 3, this third opus filmed in digital is situated between the guerrilla filmmaking approach of El Mariachi and the Hollywood bravado of Desperado. Rodriguez, who wears most of the hats here, has directed a visually spectacular digital film, even if at certain moments it can appear rough. Violence is exacerbated to the second degree, and the shootings effective, without equalizing the virtuosity of Desperado. But there are also the ironic transgressions in the reality of his actors, which render the film jubilant. Not only does he successfully transform a blond Willem Dafoe into a Mexican, but he openly has fun with two figures of show biz, Mickey Rourke and Enrique Iglesias. The former, accompanied by his own dog, is shown as an exile impatient to return to his country (in fact Rourke is eager to make his comeback in Hollywood) while the latter plays a seductive mariachi of old ladies to whom he sells his services. While the contribution of Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek in terms of panache and glamour is undeniable, it's Johnny Depp, rightly put in the center of the poster, who monopolizes the film, definitively imposing himself as THE genius of unpredictable acting. Complementary to the two preceding episodes, without being truly comparable given its nature, Once Upon a Time in Mexico closes the trilogy on a transition from the central character and offers by the same token a truly guilty cinematic pleasure.
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