Desperado - Why I Still Love It

THERE’S a moment towards the end of Desperado where Antonio Banderas confronts his opposition by uttering the words “let’s play” in his distinctive Spanish vocal style. It’s a neat way to kickstart the violence that follows - as well as a useful acknowledgement of the film’s tone and style to this point.

For while Robert Rodriguez’s movie is a revenge-driven neo-Western, it’s also an action extravaganza that places a firm emphasis on having fun, no matter how bloody the action gets.

This intent is signalled from the outset, as supporting actor Steve Buscemi walks into a bar filled with ‘scum’ and recounts to the bartender (Cheech Marín) and his assistant the story of a legendary gunman who has just massacred another bar. The legend in question goes by the name of El Mariachi, a Mexican with a guitar case full of guns, and he’s hunting a drug lord named Bucho (Joaquin de Almeida), who is responsible for killing the woman he loves and injuring his main guitar playing hand (he is formerly a mariachi player).

Buscemi accentuates his story by playing up how big the Mexican gunman (Banderas) is and how violent the deaths were, striking fear into the hearts of the assembled patrons of the Tarasco bar. But it’s comically done. And Buscemi proves a master storyteller.

Not long after, El Mariachi does arrive at the Tarasco and, just like the former bar, ends up laying waste to everyone inside - but not before Quentin Tarantino has dropped by to deliver another joke to Marin’s bartender and drop in his own brand of Tarantino ‘cool’ into proceedings. It’s that kind of movie.

But the carnage that accompanies El Mariachi’s visit is also gloriously choreographed to appear both ultra stylish and comical. Take, for example, Banderas and one opponent sliding along the bar towards each other, machine guns in hand, until they collide, simultaneously pull the triggers and find their weapons to be empty.

The ensuing exchange continues with each grabbing empty weapons until Banderas eventually gives up trying and simply snaps his opponent’s neck. It’s outrageously done - as is his disdainful dispensing of Marin’s dead bartender once he realises he can no longer provide any information (slamming his head against the bar, so that his body bounces backwards onto the ground).

Rodriguez is clearly having huge fun inventing deaths here… and while this could have felt exploitative and unpleasant, it’s done with such panache that you almost feel like whooping along.

Thereafter, the mayhem just gets more and more ridiculously enjoyable, whether in the deployment of Danny Trejo’s knife-wielding assassin (sent out to help Bucho, yet killed by Bucho’s own men), or Salma Hayek’s stupendously sexy bookshop owner Carolina, whose entrance causes a car crash.

Hayek is a sultry force of nature here - and she strikes up an ultra hot chemistry with Banderas that actually lends the film its heart.

But even this romance is infused with violence as Carolina finds herself, almost by default, an unwitting accomplice in El Mariachi’s grand plan for revenge.

A scene in which she seductively sings to Banderas in Spanish, while sitting astride him and strumming a guitar, is genuinely sexy… yet also interrupted by another comical slice of action as assassins close in on their bedroom, their silhouettes observed through the windows by Banderas, who lines up his guns, whisking them past Hayek’s face, until he has both weapons pointed at her. She remains oblivious until he kicks her out of the way and participates in another balletic gunfight that ultimately sees her bookshop being burnt to the ground and the two of them fleeing across a rooftop and indulging in yet more outlandish gun play.

In Desperado, there’s hardly ever a dull moment. But there’s so many cool ones.

I also dig the sight of Banderas twiddling his guns as he contemplates his next move, or telling a priest that there is no point in giving his confession because “where I’m headed, I’ll be coming straight back”. Or his teasing, playful, deliciously flirtatious exchanges with Hayek whenever she helps him out of trouble or patches him up: “Did I thank you?” “I will!”

But there is a serious side too; insights into the pain and hurt that El Mariachi is feeling and the challenges posed by the vengeful path he has chosen to walk. Banderas delivers these moments in credible, wistful fashion, drawing on his strengths as one of the most exciting and talented Spanish actors of his generation (a talent that made him a regular go-to for pre-Hollywood Pedro Almodovar).

This is perhaps best underlined in a scene where Banderas soulfully and ruefully laments: “You know, it's easier to pull the trigger than play guitar. Easier to destroy than to create.”

Rodriguez, for his part, juggles all of these elements in smooth, seamless fashion. His direction has never been more slick and polished - his excessive tendencies (as later evidenced in the likes of From Dusk Till Dawn and Planet Terror) somehow not seeming so gratuitous and self-satisfied.

He even manages to throw in a pretty decent last act twist concerning the relationship between El Mariachi and Bucho that not many will see coming.

Sure, there’s an absurdity to proceedings that cannot be overlooked (not least the arrival of El Mariachi’s cousins, Campa and Quino, with their missile and machine gun loaded guitar cases), but this also lends the film its fierce sense of identity.

Desperado is a larger than life experience that exists to be cool. And it’s a film that only seems to ripen with age… a violent, sexy and frequently funny delight that consistently rewards repeat viewing.