Depp fans flames in quirky 'Mexico'
For those who fell hard for Johnny Depp after seeing Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, in which he pulled off the most playfully clever performance of the summer, there's Once Upon a Time in Mexico to keep the fire burning. Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek are married in Once Upon a Time in Mexico.
Depp plays a gun-slinging, corrupt CIA agent in Robert Rodriguez's entertainingly quirky film, a sequel to El Mariachi and Desperado. Depp tosses off nearly as many deadpan quips as he did in Pirates and steals the movie from everyone else in the cast, including a rugged Antonio Banderas, who is perfect for the role of a man haunted by grief. Depp's good looks and Banderas' smoldering appeal go a long way toward softening the blow of Mexico's bullet-riddled action sequences. Stunning Salma Hayek co-stars as Banderas' beloved murdered wife.
Banderas brought daughter Stella, now 6, along, and Rodriguez set up shop with his three sons, Rocket, Racer and Rebel, all under 8.
For Depp, leaving his 4-year-old daughter Lily-Rose to go south of the border wasn't an option. (He and Vanessa Paradis now have a son, Jack, 1, as well.) "They grow and you miss so much stuff," he says. "It's such a brief period of time that kiddies are kiddies before they begin to grow up. I don't want to miss a second of it."
But he didn't take any chances, reports Rodriguez. "I knew I'd get along with Johnny really well because he's as paranoid a dad as me," he says. "He brought bottled water because he didn't want his daughter to get sick. Guys cursed with imaginations can imagine the worst things happening to your children."
This is the third installment in Rodriguez's saga of the legendary guitarist hero known as El Mariachi (Banderas). "We call him El," local crook Danny Trejo explains. "As in 'The.' " Plays on words make for some strangely funny dialogue. Depp asks Trejo to join him on his mission to kill a corrupt general who is planning a coup. When Trejo hesitates, Depp asks: "Are you a Mexi-can or a Mexi-can't?" (Related item: Watch Once Upon a Time in Mexico's trailer)
Depp is an eccentric who orders pork and tequila wherever he goes, urging everyone to sample his meals. But he has more on his plate than the other white meat. He lines up Banderas and two musician pals (Enrique Iglesias and Marco Leonardi) to pose as mariachis and stop the coup. Banderas is fueled by vengeance: The general shot and killed his wife and daughter.
Noteworthy supporting performances include a black-haired, mustachioed Willem Dafoe as the head of a drug cartel and Mickey Rourke as an American fugitive forever toting a rheumy-eyed Chihuahua. Rodriguez, who not only wrote and directed Mexico but also shot, edited and scored it, makes his worlds uniquely vivid. Such also was the case with all three of his Spy Kids films.
In Mexico, Rodriguez has fashioned a swaggering fantasy that pays homage to
spaghetti Westerns such as Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Plenty
of blood is shed, lots of powerful artillery is fired, and action sequences
provide astounding car crashes and fiery explosions. But Rodriguez is such a
visual stylist, and the violence is so cartoonish, that the flurry of whizzing
bullets and growing pile of bodies is not as offensive as it might be