El Mariachi

Filmed in 1992 and being Robert Rodriquez’s film debut this is a film about a guitar player whom walk into town at the same time a gangster shoots up some dudes in a bar wearing same clothes so at first it’s a case of Mistaken identity but then I believe the Mariachi guy just kind of falls into the role of the renegade assassin that takes out the man running the streets or so he thinks... falling in love with the bosses girl... I thought this film was poetic, romantic and tragic all at the same time... I got a kick out of a scene where the dude’s in Domino’s tub as she holds a gun on him and forces him to sing... the song he sings was racy but supposedly an original of his... the film starred Carlos Gallardo, Consuelo Gomez, Peter Marquardt and Reinol Martinez. An interesting look at a criminal organization no necessarily organized, a raw slice of life piece if independent structure and I feel well paced for it's low budget. I recommend to see.

El Mariachi (1992)

Directed by Robert Rodriguez

There's a romantic notion in cinema that constraints breed creativity, that necessity mothers invention, that you don't need a Hollywood budget to tell a compelling story. Most of the time, this is wishful thinking offered by people who've never tried to shoot a feature film with pocket change and borrowed equipment. Then there's El Mariachi, Robert Rodriguez's legendary debut, made for approximately seven thousand dollars, which proves that sometimes the romantic notion is absolutely true.

The premise is elegantly simple: a wandering mariachi musician (Carlos Gallardo) arrives in a small Mexican town carrying a guitar case, searching for work. Unfortunately, a hitman dressed identically and carrying an identical case full of weapons is also in town, and the local drug lord's enforcers can't tell the difference. Mistaken identity, wrong place, wrong time, bullets flying, and our innocent musician running for his life. It's a doppelganger plot executed with precision, and I can't think of another mistaken identity film that works this well, that wrings this much tension and dark comedy from the simple fact that two men look alike and carry similar luggage.

Rodriguez shot on 16mm, did his own cinematography, editing, and sound, essentially becoming a one-man film school in the process. The legend has become part of indie cinema folklore: he checked himself into medical testing facilities to raise money, used local non-actors, shot without permits, improvised solutions to every technical challenge. The result is raw, scrappy, undeniably rough around the edges, but alive with the kind of energy that only comes from someone who has no safety net and everything to prove.

The action sequences are what make this film sing. Rodriguez stages gunfights with inventiveness and velocity, understanding instinctively that momentum matters more than polish. Yes, they've been eclipsed by more complicated, more expensive a...