B Plus Movies

With the budget of the average movie made in Hollywood today, any one person would be set for life. Between CGI and the salary of name brand actors, the numbers connected to any one production are astronomical, unthinkable twenty years ago. It’s practically a necessity.

Unless you’re Robert Rodriguez and manage to create and enormously successful franchise on $7000 because you made the unexpected hit El Mariachi.

Mariachi, as a musical style, involves a couple of guitar players, a few violins, a small acoustic bass and some really stylish outfits. It’s practitioners are street corner performers and buskers, iconic to the world’s perception of Mexico. The main character in El Mariachi is such a guitar player.

When we meet the Mariachi, he’s passing through a town trying to make a few dollars and get further down the path to stardom. The complication comes in the form of a hitman who keeps his guns in a guitar case. The mobster that the hitman wants dead mistakes the mariachi for his target, convinced in no small part by the fact the mariachi ends up with the weapon loaded guitar case. Gunfire and a love story follow soon after.

Anyone who sees this movie’s sequels (Desperado and Once Upon a Time in Mexico) will notice a distinct lack of Antonio Banderas. This is because the cast is full of the director’s friends. Originally produced for the Mexican direct to video market, this movie was made on a threadbare shoestring. It was only later that Rodriguez could afford the A-Listers.

The performances aren’t Oscar worthy, but they’re raw and very well done for the sort of film. There’s a lot of heart in this movie, not just a little drama and even some comedy. The plot occasionally feels like a lethal sitcom, but more often feels like a tragedy in addition to an action film. With this movie, less really was more.

The budget does show in some places, though. El Mariachi doesn’t feel polished or refined. It’s also a subtitled film, not so much a problem but something that American audiences usually like some warning about. 

Of course El Mariachi ranks B+ in my system, being a seminal part of the stripped down, edgy trend of bare bones, gutsy movies in the 90’s like Pulp Fiction. This movie proves that money doesn’t build films, but ideas and that every once in a while, the unknown director or the no name production company pulls something amazing out of thin air. And that’s a reminder that idea starved Hollywood could use before it gives us another bad remake of some 80’s TV series, don’t you think?