The Mexican Review
by Christopher Null (cnull AT mindspring DOT com)March 4th, 2001
THE MEXICAN
A film review by Christopher Null
Copyright 2001 filmcritic.com
filmcritic.com
Brad and Julia! Julia and Brad!! Together for the first time!!!
Or not. The Mexican has the distinction of being a romance that manages
to keep its lovey-dovey costars further apart than any film since
Sleepless in Seattle. Not that there was any way around it. Brad
Pitt's Jerry is a completely hapless bagman for a shifty mob boss (Bob
Balaban), sent from L.A. to Mexico to retrieve the titular objet d'art
-- an antique pistol.
This doesn't sit well with his difficult yet practically-a-wife
girlfriend Samantha (Julia Roberts), who swears she'll move to Las Vegas
if he goes on the job. Bound by honor and/or the threat of death, he
goes. And so does Julia.
And so the adventure begins.
In a convoluted tale of double-crosses, stolen identities, Mexican
curses, language barriers, and closeted homosexuality, The Mexican romps
through more genres (romance, comedy, adventure, drama, Western) than it
does miles of Mexican roadway. Jerry finds the gun, and its deliverer
gets killed. Sam heads off to Vegas and gets herself kidnapped.
Twice. People come back from the dead. Characters get killed off
unexpectedly. A dog barks. Tequila is consumed.
Indeed, much of The Mexican plays out like highfalutin nonsense, with
Jerry the most ridiculously incapable courier ever put on this earth.
He's endlessly losing the gun while inexplicably retrieving it again and
again. He never learns a lesson about hiding valuables while managing
to figure out the complex plot against him. Meanwhile, Sam is content
to simply nag nag nag. If she can't bitch out Jerry on the phone, she's
happy to bend the ear of her kidnapper to wax on the topic of love in
the zeroes, thus screwing up his life, too.
Much to everyone's relief, a lot of this banter manages to come across
as the witty humor it's intended to be. Even in one of her most grating
roles on film, it's hard not to like the overpowering Julia. And Brad,
well, Brad's dunderhead comes across as the good-natured pendejo that he
really is. Pitt amuses, and while Gore Verbinski hasn't come far as a
director since Mouse Hunt, the jokes pay off more often than not, and
the unexpected twists in J.H. Wyman's script liven up the picture
considerably. That's good, because at two hours in running time, the
movie is much too long to support its ultimately frivolous guts as a
harmless road trip picture.
Altogether the film is likable enough and perfect for young, moviegoing
couples during an early spring. But sadly, I'm already starting to
loathe The Mexican's influence. Case in point: On the way home in the
car, my wife just wouldn't get off my back about the VCR. Julia, what
hast thou wrought?
RATING: ***1/2
|------------------------------|
\ ***** Perfection \
\ **** Good, memorable film \
\ *** Average, hits and misses \
\ ** Sub-par on many levels \
\ * Unquestionably awful \
|------------------------------|
MPAA Rating: R
Director: Gore Verbinski
Producer: John Baldecchi, Lawrence Bender
Writer: J.H. Wyman
Starring: Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, James Gandolfini, David Krumholtz,
Gene Hackman, Luis Felipe Tovar, Bob Balaban, J.K. Simmons, Michael
Cerveris
http://www.amazon.com/themexican
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