Once Upon a Time In Mexico

2003 Sony Pictures
Written and Directed by: Robert Rodriguez
Starring: Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Johnny Depp, Mickey Rourke, Eva Mendes, Danny Trejo, Enrique Iglesias, Marco Leonardi, Cheech Marin, Rubén Blades, and Willem Dafoe
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 102 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 3/10

El Mariachi is broken. His wife and child have been murdered by the evil General Marquez, and now he's sad and aimless, until he's recruited by the CIA...to kill General Marquez. However, El Mariachi is just a pawn in a massive, convoluted, nonsensical and mind-numbingly boring game.
Robert Rodriguez ends his Mexico Trilogy with a shrug-inducing whimper in 2003's Once Upon a Time In Mexico. The trilogy's central character, the gun-fighting El Mariachi, is reduced to a supporting, near-cameo role, while attention is instead directed toward a bunch of nondescript, uninteresting military and political figures, as well as Johnny Depp's uniquely annoying FBI agent, who I believe Rodriguez intended for the audience to like. The film is 102 minutes, THREE MINUTES shorter than previous film, Desperado, yet feels three times longer. Even the visuals and mood, generally the strength of the previous films in this trilogy, are bleary and bleak, the charming character of rural, small-town Mexico reduced to what amounts to a generic Hispanic theme park shot through a yellow filter. Salma Hayek is prominent on the movie poster, but appears even less than Banderas, though her flashback scenes with El Mariachi are Once Upon a Time In Mexico's only moments of fun, and really the only moments worth watching in this dreary and tedious disappointment of a film.