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With `Desperado' director Rodriguez takes on Hollywood

By Joshua Rich
Daily Arts Editor

Once in a while, we hear amazing stories. A child is saved from the murky depths of an imprisoning water well; a Michigan student survives a devastating plane crash in which most passengers die; a popular and highly acclaimed movie is made for only $7,000, using nothing more than 16-mm film.

Of course, the gravity of the miracle certainly depends on your point of view. Then again, given the fact that Robert Rodriguez's 1992 film, "El Mariachi," had a budget that was considerably smaller than the price of a new Volvo (and that the average cost of movies is about 3,000 times that of this film), one could practically consider its creation a slight act of God.

In the meantime, this young director has already made an indelible mark on movies of the'90s. So much so, in fact, that fans of the old shoot-'em-up western/action genre pioneered by such directing greats as Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone (or even followers of later slasher/horror films like those of "Evil Dead's" Sam Raimi) would probably consider Rodriguez's recent emergence as nothing short of the Second Coming.

But don't scoff just yet; Rodriguez, unlike so many of his peers, is certainly due some praise. If nothing else, he has managed to step out of the giant shadow of Quentin Tarantino -- unquestionably the messiah of the indie film industry -- to produce three (and one-quarter) films of relatively high quality. Rodriguez is young. He is talented. And, given his follow-up features to the much-hyped "El Mariachi," he shows no signs of slacking off.

In fact, in the past six months alone, Rodriguez has produced three separate films that have all arrived amidst great fanfare. His post-"Mariachi" life began last summer with the release of "Desperado," the long-awaited semi-sequel to his earlier film. In this case, the entirely absurd premise of the movie remains much the same as before -- rebellious guitar player Antonio Banderas hunts down an infamous drug lord, and he always manages to keep his "guitar" at his side.

Slightly updated from the "El Mariachi" tale, "Desperado" -- which is out on home video this week -- features known acting stars like Banderas and Cheech Marin (as well as Tarantino who, thankfully, receives the demise he deserved to meet in "Pulp Fiction"). Further, cheaper looking sets are replaced for more realistic ones, a more dynamic, exciting style of photography is embraced, and repeated homages are made to the directors of violent westerns of the past. Watch as -- in the silly, "spaghetti western" style of Leone (although Rodriguez is certainly a bit more hyperbolic in his intent) -- guitar cases are revealed to contain arsenals of weapons or to be guns themselves. When Rodriguez summons the more gruesome manner of Peckinpah, bodies don't just bleed when shot or stabbed, they explode and blood spurts all over the place.

Such is the case in Rodriguez's even more recent pictures -- his segment in the joint effort, "Four Rooms" (his was widely considered the most outstanding of the lot -- which included a rather still-born installment directed by señor Tarantino), and his current film, "From Dusk Till Dawn."

In this latest picture, just as in "Desperado," Rodriguez plays out all the old conventions of cinematic violence to their fullest extent.

As we follow the villainous Gecko brothers, George Clooney and Tarantino, on a murderous rampage through the southwest, we see heads blown off and people strangely maimed, and we laugh at the preposterousness of it all.

When the two bad boys reach their Mexican destination and encounter a nest of vampires, Rodriguez goes fantastically bonkers. He invokes the scary styles of such masters of the horror genre as Sam Raimi, making the gory bloodfest a rollickingly wild event.

While we may be initially disgusted by what we see before us (and then we laugh despite our distaste), we should nevertheless admire Rodriguez's achievements. These films are not things to just push aside with the labels "too violent" or "intolerable" smacked on them. They are great innovations. While Tarantino paid homage to the pulp novels and lurid crime sagas of days long gone, so does Rodriguez adopt the outlandish building blocks of those shotgun-shootin', tobacco-chewin', blood-spewin' directors before him.

In "Desperado," he does not just imitate Leone and Peckinpah, he expands on what those men created. And that is what is so admirable. At a point in film history when it is so easy and cheap to merely imitate those who came earlier, Rodriguez dares to seize upon their ideas and say: "I can go even further; I can do even better than they ever did."

Whether he actually succeeds may always remain in question, but this director has certainly added some freshness and excitement to a increasingly banal industry. We've seen his type of film before, but never in nearly the same manner. It was never THIS fun.

Other recent releases:

"Love and Human Remains" -- A straight-to-video docu-drama about the Lisa Marie "Love Me Tender" Presley and Michael "The Girl Is Mine" Jackson's divorce saga. Complete with some arguments between, er, I mean some play-by-play commentary by Bobby Shapiro and Johnny C.