Irish Film Institute -El Mariachi

El Mariachi

Director: Robert Rodriguez


An astonishing first feature from young American director Robert Rodriguez which cost an amazing $7000 dollarsto make, El Mariachi was the sensation of the Sundance and Toronto film festival and earned it’s director a two year deal with Columbia.
A lone, black-clar guitar player, the eponymous Mariachi, arrives at a mexican border town looking for employment and is mistaken for a similarly attired hitman whose own identical guitar case contains a semi-automatic arsenal. There the Mariachi falls for a beautiful bar owner who takes him in, unaware of the inevitably tragic and explosive consequences of her actions.
Shamelessly derivative – Mad Max, The Terminator, the Coen Brothers, you name it – this, much like Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead, has an exhilarating rawness that works for rather than against it; it’s Kinetic pacing, visceral editing and bravura camerwork revealing the presence of a director with unbridled visual panache.

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