EL MARIACHI
A film review by Keith Meng-Wei Loh
Copyright 1993 Keith Meng-Wei Loh
EL MARIACHI -- LOW BUDGET ACTION, 'BIG BUDGET' EFFECT? --
For those of us who have been raised on a steady diet of Hollywood films and culture, the pre)eminence of the budget and of dollar signs have come to represent a benchmark--a signpost--that, in the hype media, at least, indicates the value of a film.
Those absorbed in the Hollywood culture have come to follow films as an industry and, consequently, have come to regard the budget as a star on the marquee, and at times on an equal footing as the true stars themselves. So, then, the budget of LAST ACTION HERO, which can only be guessed as more than the health expenditures of many developing countries, should have equal billing as the formidable name of Arnold Schwarzenegger and John McTiernan.
If so, the marquee for EL MARIACHI would be ridiculously out of touch. It would read: EL MARIACHI / written and directed by Robert Rodriguez / budget: US $7,000.
$7,000 is surely a fraction of the cost of a Hollywood marketing campaign in mid-sized city. For a Hollywood seven grand you may be able to rent cameras for an hour but you would not be able to pay for their insurance. Seven grand worth of film can be shot and dumped in a few minutes. You could not afford Arnold Schwarzenegger for any length of time.
Likely, you also would not have John McTiernan or even John Woo helming your production, but you would have twenty-four-year old Robert Rodriguez. And if you are Rodriguez, you can hire yourself for nothing and work between university semesters, beg for cameras, probably collect a cast of actors willing to work for nothing or a percentage, and *then* somehow find studio time for editing. Your $7,000 would go a far longer way in Mexico than in Hollywood, but not a lot more.
EL MARIACHI is not a great film, but it is a decent action/comedy in the mold of many Hollywood styled guns and laughs films that have come to pervade the film industries of many other countries. The bustling Hong Kong and Indian film industries each boast output far in excess of the U.S. industry and with budgets likely a third of the average U.S. film budget for their most expensive action blockbusters. Many, like EL MARIACHI will have come through on shoestring budgets with very decent, even big budget effects.
It took nearly a decade for the fame of John Woo to come through to the U.S., a director of action films with a distinctive American flavour but who out-does most Americans in dazzle and stunts. On the American doorstep, does the Mexican industry offer a similar boomerang effect? EL MARIACHI is not HARDBOILED by any means, but it is a good example of how, in many places, a low budget means very little if off-set by energy and vision. Gussied up and given a recognizably Hollywood cast, EL MARIACHI becomes a Van Damme movie or even RESERVOIR DOGS, another example of how a small budget (though not $7,000!) can mean very little within the U.S.
The vision in EL MARIACHI is a familiar one with a twist just as its character is American put on a Mexican twist. It's a case of mistaken identity: a mariachi player arrives in a town looking for work at the same time as a vengeful hitman returns looking for the yanqui crime boss who put him in jail. Both wear black and carry guitar cases. But in the hitman's case is an arsenal; the mariachi has his guitar.
You can figure out the rest but it must be said that EL MARIACHI is witty and well plotted. The action is not complex, but comparable with many American films. There is an obligatory body count but in its heart EL MARIACHI is a comedy that is well worth the time.
EL MARIACHI's billing as an "homage to the spaghetti western" is an irony that can't be missed. "Spaghetti westerns" were, in the 60s and 70s, examples of Italian directors like Sergio Leone outworking an American mythos better than Americans when the dominant American cinemacultural product was the western. In the 80s, the dominant American product has had to be the action-adventure (sourced, of course, from the westerns).
At the height of the action)adventure dubbed copies of RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART III played to packed houses in Beirut. While no film would likely bill themselves as homages "to the 80s Rambo pictures," it seems clear that the boomerang for this American product is coming back with a vengeance. Later this year, John Woo will be releasing HARD TARGET starring Jean Claude Van Damme. Is this any different than Sergio Leone bringing back Clint Eastwood in the "Man With No Name" pictures?
None of this is to say that what are coming back are photocopies. To do that would be to enter into the dangerous America vs. Asia stereotypical battles which have come to litter the political arena. Here we are speaking of culture and cultural spin. The films that come back may have been sourced in American "flavour" but they return with decidedly different and original spins.
While in EL MARIACHI we have a scene with the Mariachi in black clothes walking down the street with a MAC-10 slung over his shoulder in a seeming carbon of the TERMINATOR, Arnold was never carrying a guitar case in the other hand, nor did he ever sing love songs while under threat of castration. The enemies in EL MARIACHI are the gringos, not the dark skinned enemies of Rambo and the code of conduct is decidedly latin.
Finally, the most important spin that has come back with this boomerang is a perspective on the cost of films. Returning to what I was said at the beginning, if we are to regard film budgets as an expression of their value, then to see quality films returning with budgets a fraction of the cost of their American cousins is to realize that American costs and benefits have polarized. The budget has taken on an immense portion of the marquee in the U.S., where elsewhere the cost is still a means, not a justification.
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