Once Upon a Time in Mexico
Metascore
56 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 34 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 20 out of 34
  2. Mixed: 9 out of 34
  3. Negative: 5 out of 34
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  1. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Peter Hartlaub
    100
    Excellent.
  2. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marrit Ingman
    89
    The movie gets goofy from time to time -- as when payola arrives in a vintage "Clash of the Titans lunchbox -- but the filmmakers and cast have the style and the swagger to back it up.
  3. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Jean Oppenheimer
    80
    Affectionately conceived, imaginatively staged and highly entertaining.
  4. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Andrew O'Hehir
    80
    Make no mistake, this movie is a mess. But, wow, what a mess! It's an exploding piñata, full of low comedy and high drama, deliriously colorful fight scenes and vehicle chases.
  5. Time
    Reviewed by: Richard Schickel
    80
    It's an exercise in style by Robert Rodriguez and not to be taken any more (or less) seriously than his giddy "Spy Kids" movies.
  6. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Ann Hornaday
    80
    Proves to be a whiz-bang kick in the pants.
  7. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    75
    You don't want to miss Depp in this movie -- he knocks it out of the park.
  8. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    75
    I understood the general outlines of the story, I liked the bold strokes he uses to create the characters, and I was amused by the camera work, which includes a lot of shots that are about themselves.
  9. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Megan Lehmann
    75
    It's the addition of Depp's corrupt CIA agent, Sands, that really makes this violent, over-the-top action film, with its maze-like plot, sing.
  10. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Claudia Puig
    75
    Rodriguez is such a visual stylist, and the violence is so cartoonish, that the flurry of whizzing bullets and growing pile of bodies is not as offensive as it might be.
  11. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    75
    A bloody fairy tale with no moral and a lot of juice.
  12. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Owen Gleiberman
    75
    In its wildly overwrought, burrito-Western way, is about as close to a home movie as you're likely to see in a megaplex.
  13. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Ernest Hardy
    70
    The movie is stolen by the gorgeous, droll and hilarious Depp. The movie crackles when he's onscreen and only fitfully sparks when he's not.
  14. Dallas Observer
    Reviewed by: Luke Y. Thompson
    70
    God bless Johnny Depp. For the second time this year, the man has almost single-handedly redeemed an action movie that would otherwise be indistinguishable from the pack.
  15. Variety
    Reviewed by: David Rooney
    70
    Evokes the mythic feel of Sergio Leone Westerns. Despite a convoluted plot that begs for cleaner lines, the wild shoot-outs, cartoonish violence and charismatic cast should lure action fans to theaters.
  16. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Shawn Levy
    67
    You ride along with a movie like this with a big, dumb grin on your face and no guilt. Not one of this summer's megabucks movies felt this frisky or fun.
  17. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Wilmington
    63
    An epic unhinged, and while its best sections suggest a Loony Tune done by Sam Peckinpah and Emilio Fernandez, "Mexico" needs to be even crazier than it is.
  18. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Rene Rodriguez
    63
    If not exactly epic, the movie is certainly the biggest and most complex of Rodriguez's Mariachi trilogy, which began in "El Mariachi" and continued in "Desperado."
  19. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Steven Rea
    63
    Starts having the same effect as one too many tequilas: the Hong Kong-style stunts, the goofy wisecracks, the foxy presence of Eva Mendes -- all of it becomes blurry and numbing.
  20. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Wesley Morris
    63
    It's a grisly, chuckling cartoon made on shots of tequila, Red Bull, and Sergio Leone.
  21. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Maitland McDonagh
    60
    Banderas inhabits the role of the mariachi with a feral grace undimished by the seven-year gap between films.
  22. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jami Bernard
    50
    Paying homage to Sergio Leone, "Mexico" aims too high and, in the process, becomes more like every generic, overplotted drug-cartel-and-revenge flick out there.
  23. Premiere
    Reviewed by: Addison MacDonald
    50
    The entire film is a thrown-together collection of gunfights and in-jokes. The film is more concerned with expanding this universe of seedy tequila bars and dusty city streets than it is in telling a narrative story.
  24. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Ray Conlogue
    50
    A clear case of huevos con hubris.
  25. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Kevin Carr
    50
    If only there had been more Salma Hayek.
  26. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Michael O'Sullivan
    50
    However many millions of dollars Rodriguez set aside for blanks and exploding squibs was a waste. Depp's salary, on the other hand, was money well spent.
  27. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Keith Phipps
    40
    An overstuffed would-be epic.
  28. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Jessica Winter
    40
    Having already looted the Peckinpah and spaghetti-western archives, the director now quotes his own quotations, in service of not a sequel but a vociferous reiteration.
  29. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Manohla Dargis
    40
    Depp's performance reminds us that, yeah, it's only a movie -- just not a good one.
  30. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Michael Sragow
    38
    Needs a story.
  31. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Dana Stevens
    30
    The only thing missing is a coherent story -- or even, for that matter, an interesting idea for one.
  32. Slate
    Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    30
    The whole movie is like that: showy stunts, explosions, over-the-top acting, fiesta colors, lurid angles, and a sense of nothing--nada--at stake.
  33. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Rosenbaum
    30
    The result is a dull and campy 97-minute bloodbath offering little distinction between good guys and bad.
  34. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: William Arnold
    25
    The film's deliberately overblown cartoonishness and its gleefully pandering adolescent cruelty never blend into the enjoyable style of, say, a good spaghetti western (Rodriguez's acknowledged model), or even a bad Quentin Tarantino movie.

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
6.4 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 59 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 20 out of 33
  2. Mixed: 5 out of 33
  3. Negative: 8 out of 33
  1. BlueM.
    1
    The most irritating movie I have ever had the misfortune to watch. Would have been better if there was a story instead of blindly jumping from scene to scene. All the BS gunfight scenes make me angry just thinking about them.… Full Review »
  2. Thegodfatherson
    8
    After Robert Rodriguez made his $7,000 first film "El Mariachi" (1992) and his $3 million "Desperado" (1995), Quentin Tarantino told him they were the Mexican equivalent of Sergio Leone's first two spaghetti Westerns. After the low-budget ''A Fistful of Dollars'' and ''For a Few Dollars More,'' Leone moved up to bigger budgets for ''The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'' and ''Once Upon a Time in the West'' and therefore, Tarantino told his friend, Rodriguez should now make ''Once Upon a Time in Mexico.'' And so he has, for $30 million still a relatively modest budget, as action movies go.

    Like Leone's movie, the Rodriguez epic is more interested in the moment, in great shots, in surprises and ironic reversals and closeups of sweaty faces, than in a coherent story. Both movies feed on the music of heroism and lament. Both paint their stories in bold, bright colors. Both go for sensational kills; if Clint Eastwood kills three men with one bullet, Salma Hayek kills four men with four knives, all thrown at once. In my review of "Desperado," I praised Rodriguez for his technical skill and creative energy, but said he hadn't learned to structure a story so we cared about what happened.

    That's still true in "Once Upon a Time in Mexico," but you know what? I didn't mind. I understood the general outlines of the story, I liked the bold strokes he uses to create the characters, and I was amused by the camera work, which includes a lot of shots that are about themselves.

    The actors in a movie like this have to arrive on the screen self-contained; there are flashbacks to their earlier lives, but they explain what happened to them, not who they are. With Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek and Johnny Depp as his leads, and a supporting cast including Ruben Blades, Eva Mendes, Willem Dafoe and Mickey Rourke, Rodriguez has great faces, bodies, eyes, hair, sneers, snarls and personalities to work with. Banderas is as impassive as Eastwood, Hayek steams with passion, and Johnny Depp steams with something maybe fermenting memories of "Pirates of the Caribbean." The plot is at least technically a sequel to the first two movies, once again with El Mariachi as a troubadour with a sideline in killing (early in the movie, he his guitar). I didn't remember the details of the first two films well enough to follow this continuation in detail, but so what? Essentially, El Mariachi (Banderas) is in self-imposed exile after the death of his wife Carolina (Hayek) and their daughter.

    Depp, who is a CIA agent of sorts, tracks him down with the help of a talkative bartender (Cheech Marin). He wants El Mariachi to stop a plot against the president by the drug kingpin Barrillo (Dafoe). Mickey Rourke's role is to carry a little dog in his arms, look sinister, and seem capable of more colorful dialogue than the screenplay provides for him. It's time for him to be rehabilitated in a lead.

    There are lots of fancy shots in the movie, but nothing quite equals a sensational sequence in which Banderas and Hayek, who are chained together, escape from a high-rise apartment and somehow rappel to the ground with one hanging on while the other swings down to the next level. Neat.

    Rodriguez is the one-man band of contemporary filmmakers, making his movies not quite by himself, but almost. His credits here say he "chopped, shot and scored" the movie, as well as writing and directing it, and he personally operated the new Sony 24-fps digital Hi-Def camera. As a skeptic about digital feature photography and a supporter of light through celluloid, I have to admit that this movie looks great. Maybe the camera has been improved, maybe the Boeing digital projectors are a step up from the underpowered Texas Instruments machines, but the picture is bright, crisp and detailed. Maybe it was a little too sharp-edged, since there is something to be said for the tactile softness of celluloid, but it was impressive, and an enormous improvement over what I've seen before, including Rodriguez's own "Spy Kids 2." ("Spy Kids 3-D" doesn't count because of the murkiness inherent in 3-D.) What bubbles beneath all of Rodriguez's work is an impatient joy in the act of filmmaking. He started with hundreds of home movies when he was a kid, made "Desperado" for peanuts and somehow got a studio to buy it, and is still only 35.

    He talks about how easy digital filmmaking makes it for him and the actors no fussing over lights, no worrying about film costs, lots of freedom to try things different ways. "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" sometimes feels as if he's winging it, but you have to admit he has an instinctive, exuberant feel for moving images. I am not sure a thoughtful and coherent story can be made using his methods, but made using his methods, but maybe that's not what he's interested in doing.    … Full Review »
  3. TheWalrus2000
    7
    Once Upon A Time In Mexico is like watching Spy Kids. It's so hard to take seriously because of the cheesiness and sytlized jumbling of action. That's why it's a fun film to watch.… Full Review »
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