Guns, Girl And Guitars: ‘Desperado’ Is A Real Blast

Don’t sit too close to the screen at “Desperado” or you’ll get gunpowder burns.

The weapons assault is relentless in the movie, director Robert Rodriguez’s sequel to his little-seen, low-budget “El Mariachi.” Antonio Banderas is the unnamed title hombre, a gun-slinging, ballad-singing stud who rolls into a Mexican town filled with happy people and makes sure there’s no one left standing when he leaves.

“Desperado” is bound to be compared to the equally violent “The Wild Bunch,” and it does share that movie’s flair for stylish mayhem. But Sam Peckinpah had something on his mind - a code of behavior, however warped. His movies were provocative reflections on honor and pride. But “Desperado” is a not-so-provocative reflection on what it would look like if a guy ripped a knife out of his back and blood spurted everywhere.

The violence in “Desperado” has a random, almost silly quality - a bullet between the eyes has roughly the impact of a pie in the face in a Laurel and Hardy movie. Rodriguez has cooked up some nifty gunplay, though. Banderas produces pistols as if out of nowhere, and one of his amigos has a rocket launcher embedded in a guitar case. The scr-r-r-unch of bones and spla-a-a-t of blood is meant to be funny, and it is. In one scene, Rodriguez gets a laugh with a shot in which a bullet casing accidentally hits the camera, and he adds a “ping” to make sure you notice.

Rodriguez gleefully parodies the cliches of spaghetti Westerns, like the bar in which everyone turns out to be armed and the town in which there are zero policemen. He’s lucky his tortilla Western is dominated by Banderas, who remains weirdly sympathetic even when he’s practicing what amounts to genocide. The balletically graceful Banderas also gets to play one of those currently popular I-want-to-make-love-to-you-but-first-I’m- going-to-light-897-candles sex scenes. It’s a very hot encounter with co-star Salma Hayek, a matter-of-fact drug runner whose voice has the breathy girlishness of Ann-Margret.

Less successful is Quentin Tarantino, who tells a pointlessly long joke - he’s a giant among directors, but he seems determined to prove his acting talent is tarantiny. Many of the jokes in “Desperado” have a Tarantino-ish feel, especially a pas de duel in which two gunfighters point larger and larger guns at each other’s faces, but keep finding the barrel empty when they pull the trigger.

Funny as those bits are individually, there’s no anticipation or dread in “Desperado” - Rodriguez seems to have no idea how to make an impending disaster suspenseful. How you feel about the movie depends on whether you agree that happiness is a warm corpse.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: “Desperado” Location: East Sprague, North Division and Showboat cinemas. Credits: Directed by Robert Rodriguez, starring Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek Running time: 1:46 Rating: R