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Desperado (1995)

★★★ — Desperado (1995)

Desperado is Robert Rodriguez's follow-up to his remarkable debut El Mariachi (1992), which he famously shot for around $7,000 on a camcorder while volunteering as a medical trial subject to fund it. Columbia Pictures, impressed enough by that debut to distribute it, handed Rodriguez a proper budget for this loose sequel, and the jump to $7 million represented a significant step up in scale if not necessarily in spirit. Antonio Banderas takes over the lead role from Carlos Gallardo, with Salma Hayek making her Hollywood breakthrough here alongside him. Rodriguez shot largely on location in Acuña, Mexico, maintaining the borderland aesthetic of the original while leaning hard into a grindhouse-inflected, Sergio Leone-influenced action style that was very much in keeping with the mid-1990s Tarantino-adjacent moment.

I based a DnD character on this It's brainless, but it's entertaining. Banderas is El Mariachi, a travelling guitarist with a guitar case full of guns. He must have the infinite ammo glitch. Like I said, it's whacky, it's unbelievable, it's poorly scripted and it's hammy af but for some reason you finish up saying "that was pretty fun" Tarantino, Cheech Marin, Salma Hayek and Danny Trejo round out the supporting cast in this decent Robert Rodriguez romance revenge adventure.

Rating: ★★★ | Year: 1995 | Watched: 2025-05-13

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