Desperate stereotypes

Desperado
Directed by Robert Rodriguez
Screening at Hoyts cinemas
Reviewed by Roberto Jorquera and Michael Tardif Robert Rodriguez bases his new film Desperado on the 1992 film El Mariachi, also set in Mexico. It too uses the artist/musician as the hero — a man in black with a guitar-case full of weapons and a gripe to settle. Rodriguez calls Desperado a "weird, contemporary western. It's just not a typical movie." Star of the film, Antonio Banderas, comments that in Desperado "there is romanticism and humour, but, of course, being an action movie, we are going to see lots of explosions and real excitement. The movie has something inside. The characters have feelings. They have pain. They have struggles with themselves. There is a contrast between who the Mariachi is and what he would like to be. He is both angel and devil. But he is also a dreamer. I think that it is very attractive to see this kind of person struggling with this kind of fate". Desperado might have been meant to be different but it is difficult to see in what respect. The movie centres around Banderas and his journey through the drug trafficking underworld in search of the man, Bucho, who killed his companion. While Banderas plays a more "graceful" part than Sylvester Stallone in Rambo, for example, the huge amount of blood spilt, and the large number of people killed in this film seem just as futile. It's hard to find the deeper meaning in scenes like that where Banderas walks into a pub, pulls out a few pistols and kills no less than 10 men, all of whom are shooting at him and missing. The female character, Carolina, played by Mexican actor Salma Hayek, is also caught in one of the stereotypes that mainstream feature movies like to portray. Although Carolina can be fiery and strong, in the end, all she really wants is her prince to take her away from the horrible world that surrounds her (Mexico) and live happily ever after in a new world (USA). Rodriguez attempts to justify the amount of death and violence in the film by arguing that he wanted to set the stage for something that he had yet to see in US movies — "a Latin hero ... a real, clean-cut, good guy who is Mexican". If this was the intention then Rodriguez deserves some thanks. But the end result falls far short of his stated goal, serving simply to reinforce the Latin male-chauvinist stereotype that Hollywood loves so much — and that's as far from being a real "Latin hero" as you can get.