MOVIE

A Tex-Mex tornado of fire and fury, writer-director Robert Rodriguez's astonishing 'Mexico Trilogy' broke fresh new ground in American independent and action cinema, catapulting the filmmaker and his largely Hispanic cast and crew into the Hollywood stratosphere. Rodriguez's ingenious 1993 debut El Mariachi (infamously filmed for only $7000) sees a naive young musician entering a godforsaken border town and finding himself in the middle of a deadly case of mistaken identity. The major studio follow-up Desperado sees Antonio Banderas take up the mantle of the mysterious Mariachi, stalking the Mexican underworld with enough bullets up his sleeves for every bandito in his path. Finally, 2003's Once Upon a Time in Mexico sees Rodriguez use every cutting-edge technological innovation in his arsenal to bring the trilogy's explosive conclusion to the screen, as the Mariachi finds himself in the centre of a bloody war for the soul of Mexico itself. Fun, fast and full of invention and inspiration, this deadly trio cemented Robert Rodriguez's reputation as an action auteur worth following.