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Director:
Robert Rodriguez

Starring:
Antonio Banderas
Johnny Depp
Eva Mendes
Mickey Rourke
Danny Trejo
Enrique Inglesias
Salma Hayek

Release: 12 Sep. 03
IMDb

Robert Rodriguez receives 9 credits in his latest film, Once Upon a Time in Mexico: visual effects supervisor, camera operator, production designer, producer, cinematographer, editor, composer, director, and writer. Like his first film, El Mariachi, Rodriguez uses his many hats to make a distinctive vision, something that has a semblance of a single mindset across its many elements.

This is a great thing when confronting an auteur’s quality of work, and it should, theoretically, have a direct correlation among all the elements and their value. But maybe there’s such a thing as too much: a filmmaker overwhelming his film with so many like qualities that the overall worth is hurt. Alfred Hitchcock, a director who never worked in any other capacity of his films, had a manifest touch in every element of them. Rodriguez, it might be thought, could have simply spread himself too thin; the screenplay, after all, was still being written when production began.

And yet, from a merely formalist point of view, Once Upon a Time in Mexico is a good film. Looking beyond its apparent errors (most clearly seen in its barely understandable story), the film is pure, scatterbrained entertainment. Its puerile qualities are also its best defined qualities, and the unabashed pride with which Rodriguez deploys them is masterful. The film is pure camp with the bright sheen of a Nordstrom’s price tag. But, considering its $50 million budget, even when compared to El Mariachi’s famed $7,000, Once Upon a Time in Mexico is a fairly frugal production for a Hollywood action film (of course, that’s what happens when the work of 9 positions was filled by one staffer).

Quentin Tarantino, a close friend of Rodriguez who has a similar guerilla style, has long seen a Sergio Leone beauty in El Mariachi and Desperado, requesting that Rodriguez up the spaghetti-Western feel for a third film. Once Upon a Time in Mexico (mimicking the name of two Leone masterpieces, Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon a Time in America) has been advertised as the concluding chapter in what is called the El Mariachi trilogy (itself a bit of mimicry on Leone’s Man with No Name trilogy including A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly). Getting past the fact that Desperado is little more than a flashier remake of El Mariachi, the lead is again a near silent troubadour whose musical talents are only eclipsed by his ability to kill. Now avenging the deaths of his loved ones, El (Banderas), as he is called (although that would mean his nickname is ‘The,’ meaning Robert Benigni would be Il from Il Monstro and Josette Day and Jean Marais would be La and Le from La Belle et le Bête), is absent through much of the film because the work follows multiple stories that will all converge in the end, if not sooner.

His enemy is a drug dealer (Dafoe) who ordered the attempted murder on El that killed his wife (Hayek; in an over-promoted cameo) and child. Meanwhile, the drug dealer is preparing a plot that will facilitate in the coup of the current Mexican president for replacement with a corrupt general in the Mexican army (Vigil). At the same time, both a federale (Mendes; beautiful as ever, vacuous as ever) and a retired FBI agent (Blades) are each trying to get their own opening into the operation.

And the man helping in all this, trying to use the work of everyone else in the name of American interests, is a bizarre CIA agent named Sands (Depp), who wears shirts proclaiming his employer and “I’m with Stupid” shirts that point to his crotch. He is, in most ways, the main character, although the ensemble size of the film keeps him from taking up most of the screen time.

The same is not true for the character’s impact on the audience. For the second time this year, Depp steals the show from every one else in a fairly large, fairly prestigious cast. Like in Pirates of the Caribbean, most of his nuggets seem to come straight from improvisation, including a less than veiled reference to one of Captain Jack Sparrow’s favorite terms. How is it that an actor, before only seen as the great go-to guy of Tim Burton, has become the best thing about summer cinema in 2003? Without a doubt, his work here is testament to what an actor can do with only slightly interesting dialogue. Where most actors, including such greats as Dafoe and Blades (Banderas would deserve mention here for his Spanish work but has yet to fully shine in any of his English-language films), seem to be merely pawns in Rodriguez’s beautifully structured frames (it’s the first film shot on digital to compare to All About Lily Chou-Chou in cinematographic impact), Depp comes off as a complete independent from his director's aims.

Depp, in only one capacity, does more for Once Upon a Time in Mexico than Rodriguez does in 9. But, considering how great this actor has been this year and the past, as well as what Rodriguez has done in the past (the painfully bad The Faculty and From Dusk Till Dawn, the appealing Spy Kids films), it’s safe to say that even if Rodriguez centralized all his efforts in one field, the greatness would still lie in Depp, the man who saved Hollywood summer ‘03.

Director:
Eli Roth

Starring:
Rider Strong
Jordan Ladd
Joey Kern
Cerina Vincent
James DeBello
Arie Verveen
Giuseppe Andrews

Release: 12 Sep. 03
IMDb

Rare is the horror film that correctly gauges the balance between true terror and good humor. Cabin Fever makes a valiant attempt at this, but ultimately fails to conjure enough in the anxiety department to compare to the amazing, if absurd, genius that it possesses. However, it makes up for this by taking the time to involve modest statements about sexual mores that underlie the humble scares.

Like The Evil Dead, much of the film takes place deep in the woods, carefully framing itself in a wilderness of seclusion. The caravan includes film stereotypes -- and unlikely friends -- as they celebrate college graduation by traveling into the backwoods of North Carolina, renting a cabin for the week so that all can drink heavily, two can have constant sex, and a virgin can hopefully turn out with the girl he has long pined over. None of this is really groundbreaking, but it shuffles in a mode of safety, the implication of simple, recognizable fragments to create the needed tone of the whole work. It is in this safety that first time director Eli Roth finds his clearest understanding of horror film success by allowing the audience to underestimate any originality that might be found within.

As the film documents the violent altercation between the five kids and a wanderer inflicted with some skin-eating virus (the part, played by Verveen, is somewhat reminiscent, in a weird way, of the homeless man in Stephen King’s Apt Pupil), it implicates them in a bit of veiled selfishness, as they attempt to kill a man who is, if rabidly, attempting to get their help. All of what occurs in Cabin Fever is bent on this mêlée, a fight that puts blame on them despite the fact that their actions are almost acceptable under the circumstances (would you let a man bleeding from every pore into your autumnal holiday cabin?). Aflame, he runs away and jumps into the reservoir, his carcass spreading the virus into the drinking water for the cabin.

The film makes another great choice in ordering the grisly deaths for each of the kids, choosing to let the most malevolent of the pack, the sweet girl next door of the aforementioned crush (Ladd), be the first to drink the tap water. The implication is that the wrongs of the rest -- including the oversexed Jeff (Kern) and Marcy (Vincent), drunk party animal Bert (DeBello), and the discontentedly horny Paul (Strong) -- will ultimately lead to the destruction of the upright citizens. Although nearly everyone gets their comeuppance, it’s the explicit way in which the film deals with the passing of the punishment that makes it clear how retribution isn’t inherently fair.

As an AIDS parable, the film shows how sexuality can be the greatest destructor of civilization and civility. Not unlike the Friday the 13th films, it is the blindness to outside affairs and afflictions created by an exhaustive impurity of the flesh that makes the spread of this disease possible. There are no condoms to be found in the cabin, and, as the drunk guy says while hunting, the main focus of killing is on anything that’s “gay.”

All this might feel too heavy for a horror film, but that is part and parcel for a genre that includes such liberal finger wagging masterpieces as Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and The Thing. To keep from getting too bogged down by any of its sociological statements, the film turns to moments of absurd levity that liven up the film with more intellectually stimulating distractions than anything in horror since Scream began nitpicking over the clichés of the genre. There are moments of pure, unbridled brilliance including a local child who bites and an old man (channeling Old Man Crenshaw from The Legend of Boggy Creek 2) whose racist epitaphs cause concern among the visiting coeds. The film ends on just the right mark, taking a proud bow before the audience as it evolves into a satire of southern living and the precise interpretation of a disease on the cusp of pandemic. Having recently traveled through Appalachia in a weekend trip to Charlotte, North Carolina, all this commotion seemed perfectly on-the-mark.

Director:
Ridley Scott

Starring:
Nicolas Cage
Alison Lohman
Sam Rockwell
Bruce Altman
Bruce McGill

Release: 12 Sep. 03
IMDb

Ridley Scott’s Matchstick Men ends perfectly because, for the first time in its nearly two-hour length, the film finally realizes that its dramatic virtues lie in its family drama roots, not its forced genre of the conman film. The only problem is that, once looking beyond the satisfaction felt by a great finale, one wishes that such a screenwriting epiphany had happened earlier.

Conmen films are a dime a dozen these days, and the best remain those that can overcome the hindrances of overblown intelligence and tiresome trickery. The genre is pained by filmmakers who consider themselves so much smarter than the target audience that they fail to notice that there’s little to the work outside of some twists and turns. The Score and Ocean’s 11 showed recently that there’s a place for genre films in high art, even when the genre is negligible and the art is a bit too commercial for the Guggenheim.

Matchstick Men is part of the pack, allowing itself to devolve into another one of those con games that involves twists visible for anyone watching with half-interest. It’s dénouement comes with the flush of the score, the shakiness of the camera, the up tempo of the editing. All this sound and fury, but it all merits none. This is a simple film that considers itself to be better, which can be the most egregious offence a filmmaker and screenwriter can make.

Thankfully, there’s another film entirely keeping Matchstick Men from joining a pantheon of rickety superiority dramas like Patch Adams and The Life of David Gale. The family drama that couples with the conman film in Matchstick Men is thoroughly compelling, built on great performances that correspond with clear, concise writing and a level of maturity that never elevates itself above the audience.

The key subplot in this story about conmen getting ready for a big job that will leave them both without any financial worries, is that of the budding relationship between the senior conman, Roy Waller (Cage), and the 14-year-old daughter, Angela (Lohman), who he finally meets for the first time. He suffers from agoraphobia and obsessive compulsive disorder, among other psychological ailments, leading him to a psychiatrist who believes that his past mistakes as a husband have left Roy unable to cope with his present existence. He contacts Angela’s mother, who left while she was pregnant, so that father and daughter can finally meet.

Inside this story is a pitch-perfect dissemination of anxiety and pleasure involved in such a new relationship between a father-daughter pair without anything in common, trying to forge something out of nothing. She wants to learn the tricks of the trade (he uneasily acquiesces), he wants to understand himself in a new context. If neither fully attains their aspirations, it is from the amount of apprehension they brought into the formula.

And then the film attempts to implausibly reverse its mechanizations of greatness for the complicated formulas of its con. I felt uneasy accepting the film as it was, but I wanted more than anything to give it a chance, to believe that Ridley Scott would be adverse to such depraved storytelling techniques. Like one of the marks these con artists prey upon, I was willing to enter the scheme in hopes of a payoff, and then became devastated when the summation was not in my favor. I respect the film for getting me in this predicament -- something that was surely intentional, though they might have meant for it to incite a few people other than myself -- but I cannot say that I don’t feel any less disillusioned.