I thought I was going to have to heavily update this review after watching it again the other day, but now I read it over again and I can’t understand why I rated it so highly before, because basically, all the below still applies, only now it’s in my worst 5 movies of the year list. I would still say it’s worth watching once, with the volume up loud etc, because it has a one-hit kick to it. But anymore would be foolhardy. Not even a dustmark on the original’s negative.

As expected, this remake had no chance of living up to the original for me. For a moment though, I was thrown – the first 10 minutes or so, pre-credits, are downright perfect, and show how much can be achieved without heavy blood-letting and bad language, and how much potential this first time director, Zack Snyder, may have. But it’s downhill pretty much from the start of the opening credits.

The problem with this movie for me, I think, lies in the fact that it assumes nothing of the audience. Some might find this somehow praiseworthy – there has been a remake of the “prequel”, Night of the Living Dead, which sets up the zombies being “born” but it was in 1990, 14 years ago. So I guess the film makers figured they might have some zombie newbies in the audience and decided to make all the characters zombie newbies too. I really don’t think it works. Even the original Dawn of the Dead was made a decade after its prequel. George Romero dealt with explaining the zombies (in particular stuff like, how to kill them, and that it’s the bites that kill and resurrect) in the opening news sequences, a device that’s present in the remake but isn’t used the same way. So we end up with, basically, stupid characters, unless you happen to know nothing about the zombies.

I had to stifle a laugh as soon as I saw the pregnant girl as part of the main group… I mean, you just know how that’s going to turn out. But that alone isn’t enough – it has to be the most unconvincing pregnancy I’ve ever seen on film too. The baby turns out to be one of the worst visual effects in the movie, and the whole character could be happily excised from the screenplay as far as I’m concerned.

I need to get the screenplay out of the way because it’s the movie’s biggest failing. There’s a guy across the street from our main gang in the mall and throughout the movie he communicates by writing messages on a whiteboard which he holds up for Ving Rhames to read through his binoculars. At the beginning, he writes “Andy – alone” on the board by way of introduction. Then Rhames (or whoever it is who’s looking through the binoculars – I think it’s one of the others actually) has to turn to the others and say, just to clarify, “His name is Andy. He’s alone.” Now, fair enough, it had to be said because the others don’t have binoculars… but it’s just such an unwieldy moment. Then there are the action movie clichés – an ending straight out of “The A-Team”, and a doubter of the plan saying, “Let me get this straight, you wanna…. [blah blah difficult and ridiculous plan]...” to which the others go, “Yup… yep… pretty much,” and he responds, “Okay. I’m in.” There must have been hundreds of better Dawn of the Dead remake scripts out there, I don’t know why the hell this one was picked.

But that’s the screenplay. Snyder does his best with what he has. The actors are all as good as can be expected for a horror movie. Ving Rhames gets some nice lines and delivers them in his inimitable manner (“Go in the cubicle, say five hail Mary’s, wipe yo’ ass and you’re good with God,”) and there’s plenty of freaky looking faces plus a few cameos for original fans. The music is very different from the original but works with the very different visuals. Saving Private Ryan style fast film stock (I think it’s fast film stock, I always forget how the effect is achieved, I just flick my video camera into sports mode…) is used to interesting effect and increasingly towards the finale. And there’s a nice idea of telling the “after-story” while the end credits roll.

This will make a good night out for today’s young people who want a really quick fix and buckets of blood (boy, when did I get so old?) But it won’t last out the original, and won’t even last out other recent horror remakes like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Ring. Its problem really is, it’s too stupid.

This is El Mariachi remade for Hollywood. Rodriguez wanted to continue his originally planned trilogy rather than simply remake his first movie (he’d planned to make three Mariachi movies before even thinking of being noticed by any bigshots… funny how things change) but I think with Desperado he got a little of both. While Desperado is pretty much the same again only bigger, slicker, and with better music, it does purport to being a continuation of the story that began with El Mariachi: this is the Mariachi’s revenge for the girl he lost in Part One. But it’s still a case of, “There’s a bad guy after me, and he has lots of henchmen, and I’m going to shoot them, and then him, and, hey, I can replace the girl on the way too!” (with apologies to Robert Rodriguez: you know I love your work really!) The difference is, this time, the Mariachi is after them too – in Part One, he’s just trying to survive.

There’s something about Desperado on this viewing that made me think Tarantino may have had more of a hand in it than just his acting turn (more of which in a second). The dialogue is too good for Rodriguez (again, apologies to Rodriguez: you know I love your work). Having now seen the Spy Kids Trilogy and Once Upon a Time in Mexico, I have to say that dialogue is not Rodriguez’s strong point… not that it’s actually a point at all, to him it’s all about story and fun. The dialogue in Desperado is not only the best in any of his movies, it’s some of the best in all movies (“You know – it’s easier to pull the trigger than play guitar. Easier to destroy than create. They kill the woman I love. They ruined my life…”). And it really rings of Tarantino. But maybe it’s just ‘cos they were hanging out more back then (they became buddies when both their debuts, El Mariachi and Reservoir Dogs, were luvvies of the year in movie land). There’s also a lot more swearing than in any of his other movies – not that it bothers me, but again it sets off Tarantino bells. Like the “real” budget of Mariachi, this is another question I’d love to know the answer to, who else contributed to the script?

Tarantino has a great bit part in the movie. He is really good at physical comedy and I wouldn’t mind seeing him act more (I’ll have to get Little Nicky some time soon). The business he does when entering the “backroom” of Tarasco Bar, walking through the dirty toilet, is hilarious, and his telling of the pissing joke at the same bar is just too descriptive for words (coupled with Rodriguez’s editing, even funnier).

Overall, this is everything that’s missing from El Mariachi – slickly shot like a Michael Bay movie, sun bouncing off everything, every sweaty face looking too beautiful for sweaty, music that plays from song to song so lazily it’s perfect (note how “Strange Face of Love” by Tito & Tarantula plays from the middle of a gunfight across a scene change, builds with the ending of a whole sequence, and ends on a scene transition… one of the best soundtrack moments ever), great actors really slumming it in a movie like this (the work between Banderas and Hayek is probably the best acting in all Rodriguez’s work to date) and genuine big explosions (plus real machine guns: in Part One Rodriguez had guns that only fired one shot!) But all this money means that the one thing that made El Mariachi great is lost… an undefinable thing, really… you’ll know, I’m sure, when you see them. Mercifully, Rodriguez broke past this studio phase and is now free to continue seeking imperfection with whatever budget he desires. This is still probably the most “complete” film in the Mariachi series though.