Desperado

DESPERADO (1995)

I have a couple of guidelines in order to consider a movie an American Hong Kong movie: If it has lots of well-staged action, if it's a sequel that's better than the original, and if it has stuff in it that the first movie didn't bother to mention (If you're thinking twin brother here, as in A Better Tomorrow, Part II, go to the head of the class). Fast, loose rules for a silly classification, anyway. Under them, The Godfather, Part II is an American HK flick, but so is Lethal Weapon II, which really does manage to capture the spirit of the HK flicks I'm sure some parts were inspired by.

Kickin' it Woo style Robert Rodriguez's first movie El Mariachi remains a bit better than the sequel, Desperado, but to me he deserves a special Academy Award for being able to take so many things from Hong Kong films and make them uniquely his. I've been watching American filmmakers try to rip off John Woo's action licks for about five years now, and Desperado is the first film that not only does them right, but manages to transform the style into the director's own, the same way that Woo did when he took so much of it from Peckinpah.

Desperado is also the movie that planted the seeds for Bah! Schulgasser spent more time talking about the phallic implications of a guitar case full of guns than she did about the movie (but then, this is the woman who referred to Hard-Boiled as hard-core pornography). The Chronicle gave it a "it's okay" review, completely neglecting that the movie had better action scenes than some of the other summer releases with more than ten times its budget. Only the San Jose Mercury News, God love them, noted that Antonio Banderas had made a romantic, tragic lead with a touch of comedy that they rightfully compared to Valentino. If nothing else, Desperado proved to me that Banderas could be as good in American films as he was in Spanish ones; the supercharged action, humor and stylishness of Desperado is a complicated tone, but so is the high-camp melodrama of Almodovar. Banderas pulls them both off with ease.

So why does Desperado not hit the highs of the original? Why did critics like Roger Ebert call it storyless? Part of this is a lack of understanding of HK films, which have a more discursive, digressive nature; a lot of HK action movies will also have romantic melodramas or broad comedy to keep the audience entertained between the roaring action scenes. But part of it is Rodriguez's fault. He fucks up one of the cardinal action movie rules, and I think it bothered a lot of people who aren't consciously aware of it. Rodriguez screws up the Unstoppable Villain rule.

Usually, the Unstoppable Villain is the henchman to the main boss. This way, he gets to go out and do things that show what a bad ass he is. Then he faces down the hero right near the very end, allowing for maximum dramatic tension. Think of ED-209 from Robocop, the unnamed hitman in A Better Tomorrow II, the young guy with the shades from The Killer, most of the white guys from Jackie Chan movies, etc., etc. Rodriguez has a scene reasonably early on where a bald kickboxer named Christos is beating up some kid in a ring. I thought "Hmmmm, he'll make a cool unstoppable villain." Then this young kid, after having his leg broken, beats Christos and I went, "Wow! This kid's really tough. He'll make a really cool unstoppable villain." The young kid and this woman in Spandex go on to take out the awesome knife throwing guy, I went, "Boy, how is the Mariachi going to beat them?" I'm imagining the Mariachi caught between the two of them (the women in Spandex, by the way she has been treated earlier in the film, obviously being another Unstoppable Villain.) And I'm just really, really impressed at how Rodriguez has given us two unorthodox Unstoppable Villains. And the audience, whether they know it consciously or not, has been schooled in the art of Action School cinema. They're expecting the same thing, too.

So what happens? What's the big showdown? Well, the kid jumps off a roof shooting a gun a few times. The woman jumps up after Bucho has been shot, and that's it. Yep, that's the big showdown. Bitter disappointment, masked by the giddiness of the Three Mariachi action scene (which in itself violates another action movie rule but never mind). Part of the fun of El Mariachi is watching which action movie rules Rodriguez follows and which ones he breaks; it's the joy of a natural born master knowing exactly what he's doing, knowing what he can get away with. But part of the frustration of Desperado is watching Rodriguez break the wrong rules: you can't set up the Unstoppable Villain and then not use them. What if Oddjob had just gone out for a pizza and never had the showdown with Bond in Goldfinger? He also introduces a lot of serious moral questions about the destructive nature of violence, but doesn't follow through about those, either.

And yet, and yet..... Desperado is a trumpet call for those of us who want to build HK style thrills into American action movies. It can be done. And Banderas's performance will keep me coming back to this movies again and again.

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