Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003)
★★½ — Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003)
There's a moment in Once Upon a Time in Mexico where you can practically feel Robert Rodriguez winking at the camera, sunglasses on, guitar case in hand, absolutely convinced he's making something cool. And here's the thing: he is making something cool. He's just not making something good. Those are very different things, and this film is perhaps the starkest illustration of that gap I've ever sat through.
This is the third entry in Rodriguez's Mexico trilogy, and on paper it should be the crown jewel. Bigger budget, bigger cast, more of everything. Antonio Banderas is back as El Mariachi, Johnny Depp swans around as a flamboyant rogue CIA agent, Willem Dafoe is doing full cartoon villain energy, and Salma Hayek returns as Carolina. There are slow-motion walks, exploding guitars, shootouts staged like music videos, and a soundtrack that genuinely slaps. If you were cutting a trailer, you'd be spoilt for choice. As an actual film though, it falls apart the moment you ask it to be anything more than a greatest hits reel.
The plot is a genuine mess. Something about a coup, a corrupt general, CIA double-crosses, revenge threads running in four different directions at once. I stopped trying to follow it properly about forty minutes in, and honestly, I don't think Rodriguez minded. The story feels like scaffolding built purely to hang set pieces on, rather than something anyone cared about constructing with any rigour. Compare that to the raw, scrappy urgency of El Mariachi, made for practically nothing but crackling with genuine tension and heart, and the drop in quality becomes almost embarrassing.
What made Desperado work, despite being flashier than its predecessor, was that it still had stakes. You felt something for these people. You believed in the romance, you felt the danger. Here, everyone is playing a type rather than a person. Depp is doing a character, not inhabiting one. Dafoe is having a grand old time chewing scenery, bless him, but there's nothing underneath it. Even Banderas, the soul of the earlier films, feels oddly peripheral in his own story. It's a stacked cast that somehow adds up to less than the sum of its parts.
I'll be fair: it's not a miserable watch. Some of the action sequences are genuinely fun in a brainless, popcorn-lobbing kind of way. The guitar theme still gives me a proper lift every time it kicks in. And there's an undeniable energy to the whole thing, a kind of chaotic enthusiasm that stops it from being boring. Rodriguez clearly loves this world he's built, and that affection is at least infectious even when the film isn't working.
But there's a hollowness to it that I couldn't shake. The whole thing is heavily Americanised, more Hollywood shoot-'em-up than the Mexican folk tale atmosphere the first two films managed to conjure, even on shoestring budgets. The grittiness is gone, replaced with gloss. The soul has been swapped out for swagger. If you've seen Rodriguez go wild and actually pull it off, something like From Dusk Till Dawn where the chaos feels purposeful and the energy is genuinely anarchic, you'll feel the difference keenly here.
Two and a half stars. A fun enough afternoon if you're stretched out on the sofa with zero demands on it, but as a trilogy closer it's a real disappointment. The worst of the three by a considerable distance. All style, no power, and unfortunately very aware of how good it looks.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 2003 | Watched: 2025-09-07
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Robert Rodriguez: Planet Terror (2007) · From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) · Machete (2010) · El Mariachi (1992)
More with Antonio Banderas: Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) · Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022) · Desperado (1995)
More from Mexico: Nightmare City (1980) · Violet Perfume: Nobody Hears You (2001) · Simon of the Desert (1965) · Babel (2006)
More from the 2000s: Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) · Daredevil (2003) · Apocalypto (2006)
More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)
More crime: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Angst (1983) · Stolen Face (1952) · Cairo Station (1958)
