Once Upon a Time in Mexico

Writer-director Robert Rodriguez serves up his best film to date as he completes his El Mariachi trilogy. Antonio Banderas returns to the gunslinger guitarist role he took over in Desperado, but Johnny Depp just about steals the film away from him with his hilarious performance as a corrupt CIA agent. The plot goes a little nuts at times (there are too many characters to be fleshed out in a two-hour running time), but lovers of Rodriguez’s brand of action comedy will forgive this fault. The action is excellent, and the laughs are very big, especially when Depp is onscreen. Salma Hayek is featured in a flashback story that shows what happened to her character after Desperado, and Willem DaFoe is also on hand as a drug lord plotting a coup against the Mexican government. One of the year’s more solid pieces of entertainment.