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Once Upon A Time in Mexico: An Overview
Boom! Pow! Bang! Welcome to the wild world of Once Upon a Time in Mexico fandom. This colorful, shallow, campy shoot-'em-up movie inspires angsty slash, frequently including bullet wounds and insanity. If sociopathic hurt/comfort is your kink, welcome home.
OUaTiM fandom includes two previous movies, El Mariachi and Desperado, as backstory, but, to my knowledge, those movies do not have their own independent fandoms, and knowing their storylines is not critical to being able to enjoy OUaTiM fic. Only in this third movie is Antonio Banderas (El Mariachi) joined by Johnny Depp (CIA Agent Sheldon Jeffrey Sands). A lot of what makes OUaTiM fandom-worthy is the two pretty men with guns and the rest of what makes OUaTiM fandom-worthy is the beautiful Johnny Depp playing a character both crazy and vulnerable.
Plot summary, The Short Version:
(Spoilers, of course!)
A corrupt CIA agent manipulates a legendary gunfighter, a retired FBI agent, a turncoat bureaucrat, and a beautiful AFN agent in an attempt to assassinate a general after the general has accomplished a military coup d'etat against the president of Mexico. Unfortunately, the CIA agent is betrayed, first by his own man and then by his lover, the beautiful AFN agent, who turns out to be the daughter of a drug cartel boss. Her father and his doctor friend blind the CIA agent and turn him loose on the streets during the fighting surrounding the coup. Meanwhile the legendary gunfighter decides to protect the president and kills the general - a man who once murdered the legendary gunfighter's family - before he accomplishes the coup. The retired FBI agent shadows the drug lord and learns that he has had surgery to change his appearance and has left behind a dead look-alike for the authorities to find. He pursues the drug-lord with the help of one of the drug-lord's men - an American fugitive who is ready for the FBI man to take him back to the U.S. because he's tired of the ugly jobs he has to do for the drug-lord - until, in a final show-down, the FBI agent manages to kill the doctor, a man who, many years earlier, tortured the FBI agent's partner to death. The blind but resourceful CIA agent kills his cartel pursuer on the street and recruits help from a kid in a yellow T-shirt, who leads him to the place where the cartel, army, presidential guards, and ordinary citizens of the city are all shooting it out. There he targets other cartel gunmen by hearing them laugh at him, and kills a few more before being shot in both legs and an arm, then kills his treacherous lover even after being shot. The kid in the yellow T-shirt, who likes the CIA agent despite having been told to "fuck off," finds the CIA agent in the street, badly wounded but not dead. The legendary gunfighter and his two friends kill a lot of people, including the drug-lord, and smuggle the president out of town. They take the payoff money intended for the dead general from the drug-lord, and which the CIA agent intended to steal, himself, and they walk off into the sunset, feeling richer and somewhat patriotic about being "sons of Mexico."
Yes, that is the short version. A longer, and hopefully more coherent summary is below.
Major characters still standing at the end:
Agent Sands
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How to adequately describe the fandom's most intriguing and compelling character? Agent Sands manipulates, cheats, and kills, apparently without remorse, but with a fiendish enjoyment of his job. Insouciant and scary, often at the same time, his cheerful speech is sprinkled with a mix of true profanity and almost childish euphemisms. A trademark insult of his is the term, "fuckmook." He only uses it once, but fanfic authors love it. His idea of camouflage in Mexico is to wear outlandish garb evocative of the stupidest American tourist. Elaborate cowboy outfits, fake moustaches, and even a T-shirt that says C.I.A.(Cleaveage Inspection Agent) are some of his "disguises." Many fanfic stories pick up at the very end of the movie, where Sands, blinded and bleeding from three gunshot wounds, leans against a building in the aftermath of the street fighting and talks to the kid who likes him. "Are you all right?" the kid asks. "I don't know," Sands replies. "You will be," says the kid, enigmatically. | ||
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| Some fans see the movie as a voyage of redemption for Agent Sands - he starts the movie by shooting a cook for being too good, and at the end he transcends defeat and proves an excellent gunman, even blind; he earns the adoration of a child and shows enough concern for the child's welfare to yield when the boy is taken hostage, and to insist the boy get out of the way before a gunfight can begin; and he even condescends to speak a little Spanish for the first time at the end of the movie. Other fans see all this, not as a journey, but as the different - sometimes contradictory - elements of the crazy quilt tapestry that makes up Agent Sheldon Jeffrey Sands. | |||
El Mariachi
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El Mariachi is the trademarked brooding hero with a tormented past. He started life as an innocent young mariachi, wanting to perform for money and keep the mariachi tradition alive. Unfortunately, the dusty towns he sought work in had little use for a musician. In the first movie, "El Mariachi," he is the victim of a serious case of mistaken identity, and discovers within himself a striking talent for gunplay. He ends up pursuing drug cartels, searching for revenge for his dead girlfriend and maimed hand, in "Desperado." His legend grows to where even hardened drug lords fear his name, or, at least his moniker, as his actual name is never told. | |
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| A killer who dislikes killing, a lover who is often alone, he told Carolina, his greatest love, that what he wanted in life was freedom, "libertad." He carries an arsenal in his guitar case, and, by the third movie his hand has recovered sufficiently that he can once again play the guitar. Now a widower, he lives a quiet life in an unnamed village that much of fandom has dubbed "Guitar Town" because the industry there is guitar-making. He still wears the black suit of a mariachi, with chains on the pantleg and a scorpion emblem on the back of his jacket. We don't find him as darkly vengeful in OUaTiM as he was in Desperado - he has not lost his heart or his conscience - but he is still one bad-ass gunman and not above a little revenge and a lot of mayhem. | ||
Ramirez
Jorge Ramirez, a retired FBI agent living in Mexico, is almost the only representative of Order in the movie, and even he revels in throwing out the rulebook, by the end. During an illustrious career, he brought down two top-ten most wanted federal criminals, but he never managed to get the goods on Barillo. Now he even lives in the same town with Barillo, as well as with Dr. Guevera, a man who tortured Ramirez's partner, Archuleta, to death. Initially he is philosophic about the way things have turned out, saying Barillo and Guevera "can't be touched." Agent Sands, looking for a little "inter-agency cooperation," convinces him to pursue revenge for Archuleta, whether it's legal or not. Ramirez personally kills Guevera in a shoot-out, but is saved from being shot by Barillo when El Mariachi appears and kills the drug-lord himself. At the end, as Ramirez leaves town with Billy Chambers's little dog, he passes the gunshot and mutilated Agent Sands. Sands doesn't ask for aid, and Ramirez offers none. The two men exchange mild insults and Ramirez walks on, leaving Sands to his fate.
Lorenzo (second from the right on the banner above)
We have not a lot of information about Lorenzo. He is one of El Mariachi's friends, also a gun-toting mariachi. He seems particularly fond of the ladies, and money seems to be his main goal. He is the friend El Mariachi trusted to keep his "special" guitar when El "retired." He is friends with Fideo, and tries to keep Fideo focused. At the end of the movie he and Fideo are on the road, their pockets stuffed with the money that had been intended as a payoff for Marquez.
Fideo
Another of El Mariachi's mariachi friends, Fideo is a drunk with the soul of a poet. When Lorenzo complains that they just played for El Presidente and were paid very little, Fideo says "It was meant as an honor." Fideo sees higher meanings than mere payoff in what they are doing. When El Presidente mistakes the attempted coup for his people attacking him, Fideo drags him to the window and says "Look out there, Presidente. Your people are fighting for you." Fideo takes foolish risks in order to kill soldiers. "I don't like military," he tells Lorenzo. Fanfic often kills off Fideo and/or Lorenzo as a way of upping the angst factor for El Mariachi.
The Kid
Also known as the kid in the yellow T-shirt, this boy has had an incarnation in each of the El Marichi movies. Possibly a symbol of innocence amongst the bloodshed, the young boy in Desperado attached himself to El Mariachi, and the young boy in OUaTiM attaches himself to Agent Sands. This boy is first seen selling gum (chicle) from his bike, and so in fandom he is often named Chiclet or Chicle-Boy. Sands pays him ten dollars to "fuck off," and the boy is delighted with the pay. Sands later recruits the kid to guide him after the cartel has blinded him. The boy is no fool - he saves Sands by kicking a gun to him in time, in one incident - but he refuses to kill for Sands. "No puedo," he tells Sands, mournfully. "I can't." The boy is with the wounded Sands at the end. His loyalty to Sands could be purely fiscal, but there are strong indications that the kid actually admires and likes the sociopath.
Plot Summary, The Long Version:
The recruits
CIA Agent Sands goes looking for an assassin to kill a General Marquez. Marquez, he has learned, is being paid by the Barillo drug cartel to kill the President of Mexico and take power in a military coup. Sands's contact leads him to the legendary El Mariachi, the "guitar-fighter" who keeps an arsenal in a music case and wields a loaded instrument. This nameless legend is now leading a peaceful existence in a village of guitar makers, but he is just the man for this job, because he has a long-standing unfilled need for revenge against Marquez. When Marquez could not own El Mariachi's wife, himself, he had killed her and their little daughter.
Revenge against Marquez is just the incentive to lure the reclusive El Mariachi from his life of peace and "libertad" back to his gunfighting world, where he is wanted by authorities of the law and by many drug cartels. In their one face-to-face meeting, Sands, cocky, manipulative, and a little demented, offers "El, (as in 'the')" a chance at his revenge, but explains that Marquez is to be killed after Marquez has killed El Presidente. Apparently Sands and/or the CIA have no problem with the presidential assassination, only with Marquez subsequently taking power. Sands explains here his view of his role in Mexico: to keep the balance. A president who is too good must be removed just as the cook at the restaurant where they meet must die because his slow-roasted pork is the best Sands has ever had, anywhere in Mexico. "You wan' me to shoot the cook?" asks El Mariachi sardonically. If he had hoped that Sands was joking, he must have been disappointed at the answer. "No, I'll shoot the cook," Sands tells him. "My car's parked out back anyway." And Sands does shoot the cook, though not before paying his bill.
If you're wondering at this point what could be enjoyable about this, remember this is not drama so much as camp. It's intentionally over the top and extreme. Also, don't forget Teh Pretties.
El Mariachi leaves his interview with Sands and goes to a church, where Sands has instructed him to meet with a contact. In fact the meeting is a test of El Mariachi's abilities; Sands has had his lackey, El Cucuy, alert the Barillo cartel that "El" will be at the church. Sands himself pretends to be the contact, briefing El from inside a confessional, doing a Marlon Brando impression. Before long the cartel goons show up, and El Mariachi wastes them all impressively, showing he has by no means lost his stuff. Pistol in hand, he genuflects before the altar, then removes all cash from the corpses and stuffs it in the church's donation box. When Sands, who vacated the church before the shooting started, calls his cell phone to ask if El is still standing, El replies, "Still."
Sands tells El he has passed the test and to assemble his team. El collects Lorenzo and Fideo from a nightclub where the two younger mariachis sing (and do other things) for pay.
Sands recruits another player, a retired FBI agent named Jorge Ramirez. Again he dangles the possibility of revenge - this time as the incentive to convince Ramirez to come out of retirement. It seems Ramirez failed to gather enough evidence on Barillo to arrest him when Barillo operated in the U.S. Now a Mexican citizen living in Mexico, Barillo can't be touched by the FBI, not officially. But, when he was in the U.S. Barillo captured Ramirez's partner, and then Barillo's doctor friend, Guevera, tortured the man to death. Sands reminds Ramirez that his partner was tortured for two weeks.
Sands meets with yet another participant in his plan, an advisor to El Presidente named Nicolas, who is willing to betray El Presidente for money. They meet at a bullfight, where Sands bets against the matador and then sabotages the matador with a remote-controlled electric shock. "The secret to winning is creative sportsmanship," he says. "In other words, you have to rig the game." The matador is badly gored and Sands uses his winnings to pay off the traitor. "You're a good rat," he tells Nicolas. "I like you."
Nicolas smuggles El Mariachi, Lorenzo, and Fideo inside to perform as musicians for El Presidente at some gala, and they use the opportunity to case the fortified building where El Presidente has taken up residence in Culiacan. El Mariachi overhears El Presidente talking about his dedication to working for the good of the people and against the drug cartels. El promises Lorenzo and Fideo that their pay will be good for helping to kill Marquez. "What's in this for you?" Lorenzo asks, knowing El Mariachi is not usually interested in money. "Only revenge," says El. "Much delayed revenge."
Sands visits his contact, Belini, again, for information on where Armando Barillo will be while General Marquez is military couping. Bellini has the information but doesn't give it to Sands right away. Sands uses a fake arm to hold his tableware so he can actually hold a gun on Belini beneath the table. Unfortunately, a waitress spills coffee on the fake arm, and draws too much attention to it. Even Belini begins to notice something is amiss. "That spill just cost you your life," says Sands and he blows Belini away. The waitress screams and Sands shoots her too. His problem is that Belini died before giving Sands what he wanted, so Sands needs to search the corpse. Sands seems genuinely surprised that no one in the bar offers to help him move the body. Once he has Belini's body in a remote area near a lake, he searches Belini's body cavities wearing latex gloves so useful for such a purpose. He finds the information under Belini's eye patch, in an empty eye socket, but he searches other cavities just to be thorough. Or because he likes doing it, hard to say.
Sands meets with the final chess piece in his game, his lover, Ajedrez. She is an AFN agent and Sands gives her the hard-won "tip-off" about Barillo's location so she can arrest Barillo and keep him out of the way of the coup and of Sands's plan to have El Mariachi off Marquez afterward. Sands tells her the 20 million pesos Barillo is paying Marquez for the coup will be theirs for the taking. Ajedrez doesn't say much, but she shoots at Sands a few times, apparently as flirting. "I'm still mad at you," she tells him. We never learn what she's mad about, but with Sands for a lover the possibilities are endless. She smiles knowingly when he leaves.
Ramirez follows Barillo and co. and learns that Dr. Guevera is performing some medical procedure on Barillo on the Day of the Dead. He also recognizes Billy Chambers, an American fugitive who is working for Barillo. When he reports all this to Sands, Sands tells him to "get inside" Barillo's organization. Ramirez approaches Chambers, probably planning to threaten him with extradition if he doesn't help bring Barillo down. It isn't necessary, as it turns out. Chambers is willing to help, and wants to be returned to the U.S. He has obediently played thug and killer for Barillo but has grown to dislike the role. He has developed a rather touching fondness for a little dog, a chihuahua, which he tries to hide from Barillo. He agrees to let Ramirez bug the dog's collar.
The captures
At this point, El Cucuy, Sands's lackey, gets greedy and decides to betray Sands for the cartel bounty on El Mariachi's head. He captures El after a glorious shoot-out and chase scene, and turns him over to Barillo. As thanks, Barillo has Chambers kill Cucuy. No one likes a traitor.
On the Day of the Dead, Ramirez follows Barillo and Guevera to the hospital where the medical procedure is to happen. He sees the AFN raid the hospital, and he follows them in, arriving in the aftermath of a shootout inside the hospital between cartel and AFN. He discovers a dead body on the operating table - it looks like Barillo was receiving plastic surgery and died from blood-loss when the operation was interrupted by the AFN. Ramirez is suspicious, though, and notices that the rings on Barillo's hands don't actually fit his fingers. The body is not really Barillo's. Ramirez pursues the escaping cartel members and is captured by Ajedrez, who arrived at the hospital with the AFN, but is now revealed to be in league with Barillo. Barillo himself is with her, his face completely wrapped in bandages, since he did actually have plastic surgery in order to start a new life. Dr. Guevera escaped the hospital earlier.
Sands, suspecting that his plans are falling apart when he can't reach either El or Cucuy, calls a CIA contact for help and arranges to meet them at a diner. He says his cell phone has been compromised, and, indeed it has, for the person who meets him at the rendezvous is Ajedrez, not the CIA. "You really didn't see it coming, did you?" she asks, as Guevera stabs him in the neck with a hypodermic.
The escapes
So now El Mariachi, Agent Sands, and Jorge Ramirez are all in the cartel's custody - but not together. El Mariachi escapes first. Drugged and beaten, El still manages to overpower his guards and escape from Barillo's estate, just as General Marquez arrives to take possession of him. He joins Lorenzo and Fideo and continues with his mission, but he tells the other mariachis, "The President is a good man." He was supposed to kill Marquez after Marquez had killed the President, but now he has changed the plan. They're going to save the President.
Sands wakes up in a drug-fogged haze to the sight of Dr. Guevera, the bandage-wrapped Barillo, and Ajedrez, who tells him she is really Barillo's daughter. Barillo tells Sands he has seen too much, and they intend to make sure that doesn't happen again. Guevera comes forward with a nasty-looking drill device, and gouges out Sands's eyes.
Marquez and the Army arrive in the city and begin fighting with the troops defending the President. As Nicolas and some guards are rushing the President out of the fortress, Marquez's men enter and shoot everyone but the President and Nicolas. The mariachis, who know the back way in from when Nicolas smuggled them in before, come in behind Marquez's men and start wreaking havoc ™. Nicolas is killed in the fighting and the mariachis take the president back to the main chamber of the building, a large room with balconied windows. There El changes jackets with the President, and also takes his ceremonial sash. Lorenzo and Fideo leave with the President, but not before first stopping by the room where 20 million pesos have been left by Barillo as payment to Marquez for the coup. They stuff their pockets, but the president, now semi-disguised in El's scorpion jacket, refuses to take any of the cash. El waits in the main chamber for Marquez.
Ajedrez and some cartel goons have tortured Ramirez, but they now leave him in the sole custody of Billy Chambers, his secret ally.
Sands is released onto the street, blood still dripping from his empty eyesockets. A cartel guard follows him. Sands grabs a kid on a bike who earlier tried to sell him some gum, and pays him to lead him through the streets. He gives the boy a small gun he had hidden in his pants, but the boy refuses to kill the man following them. Drugged, disoriented, and tortured, Sands still tries to kill the man, but in the confusion, the man takes the boy hostage. Sands throws down his gun. Just as the man is about to kill Sands, the boy kicks the gun back to him, and Sands shoots the man in the head as the man shoots Sands in the arm. The boy gives Sands the man's guns and the two of them take a cab to the presidential fortress, where, Sands tells the boy, "there will be even more dough."
The showdowns
The cab stops short of the center of the city, however, because, well, there's a "fucking coup d'etat" in the way. After making a last, futile attempt to reach help on his cell phone, Sands throws down the phone and, accompanied only by the boy, gets out of the cab and arms himself with the gunbelts the boy grabbed from the man they killed. The boy leads him to some other entrance to the presidential palace, guarded now by cartel goons rather than presidential guards. These two men watch Sands warily as the three of them face off like a traditional gunfight in an old Western. Sands insists the boy leave, which he does, reluctantly. Sands draws and shoots wildly, causing the cartel men to laugh at him. Hearing the laughs, Sands shoots them accurately, killing one of them, but the other shoots him in each leg, and Sands goes down. The remaining man approaches to finish him off, and Sands targets him by the sound of his steps, and kills him. The boy sees Sands fall and runs away.
General Marquez, thinking his men have cleared the way, enters the presidential fortress, passing many corpses to reach the main chamber. There the man wearing the President's clothes turns out to be El Mariachi. Marquez orders his men out of the room so they can have a private showdown. Again like two Western gunfighters, El and Marquez face off and El not only outdraws him, but shoots Marquez with a trick shot from behind his own back. Marquez's men come rushing in as El hides himself above the balcony door, on the outside.
Enter Barillo, Ajedrez, Guevera, and the cartel, expecting to find that Marquez has killed the president. Instead they find Marquez's body, and Ajedrez spots Sands's crumpled form out on the street, two stories below the balcony. She goes out to make sure he's dead. Finding him alive, she pulls him to his feet and asks, "See anything you like?" Sands, using the fake third arm he used with Belini, disguises the fact that he still has a gun and shoots her as she kisses him. "No," he whispers, and collapses.
Back in the main chamber, the final players enter: Billy Chambers and Special Agent Jorge Ramirez, who reminds Barillo and Guevera about the torture and murder of his partner, Archuleta. Chambers makes it clear he is not on Barillo's side anymore, and Barillo reminds Ramirez that, as an FBI agent, he is bound by certain rules. Ramirez says he's retired now and the shooting begins. Barillo kills Chambers, Ramirez kills Guevera, and, just as Barillo is about to kill Ramirez, El appears from the balcony and kills Barillo. The dog survives.
The boy returns to the collapsed Sands on his bike, Ramirez takes the dog but leaves Sands to his fate, Fideo and Lorenzo get El Presidente to his limousine and, when well out of town, part ways, and El returns to his village and rains cash on its inhabitants. In a final scene, El kisses the seal of Mexico on the presidential sash.
Whew! After writing that I have some sympathy for the film reviewer who wrote that this movie looked like Robert Rodriguez thought he could never make another movie so he had to pack them all into this one.
Major characters dead in the dirt at the end:
Ajedrez (far right on the banner above) - the daughter of Armando Barillo. She joins the AFN, presumably as a spy to report what the authorities are planning against her father's cartel. Ajedrez is instrumental in the capture and torture of Ramirez. She and Sands are lovers, and Sands tells her his plans, believing her to be AFN. She betrays him and taunts him when he is in her father's clutches. As the blinded Sands lies bleeding in the street, she goes out to finish him off, but dies while kissing him. Beautiful, dangerous, competent, and loyal to Daddy.
Barillo - Armando Barillo, the drug-lord himself. Head of the Barillo cartel. He pays Marquez to kill the President because the President is waging war on the cartels, particularly Barillo's. He has Billy Chambers cut off the fingers of his piano teacher because he thinks the man is condescending. He recruits a man who looks just like him, into his employ, so that he can leave the man's corpse in an operating room, making it look like Barillo died while receiving plastic surgery. Barillo dies at El Mariachi's hand, dramatically falling from a window after being shot.
Marquez - General Emiliano Marquez. Believed that Carolina belonged to him. When he pursued El Mariachi and Carolina, Carolina shot him in the heart. But he didn't die, and, years later, after El and Carolina were married with a daughter, he returned to claim her. She refused him and he shot mother and daughter before El could prevent him. Then he shot El, too, who also didn't die. Marquez took Carolina's heart-shaped locket - a gift to her from El - off her body, and El takes it back at the end, from Marquez's body. Marquez is paid by Barillo to kill the Presidente and take power, but is killed by El first.
Billy Chambers - An American fugitive working for Barillo. We don't learn what crimes he committed in the U.S., but he feels he's done much worse for Barillo, and is sick of it. He carries a little chihuahua named Moco around, hiding the dog from Barillo. He agrees to help Ramirez bring Barillo down and then go peaceably back to the U.S. for trial. Barillo shoots him in their final showdown.
Major characters dead in the dirt before the movie even starts:
Carolina (played by Salma Hayek), and El's daughter - My story summary makes almost no mention of Carolina, since she exists only in flashback, but El's pain at her loss, and the loss of his unnamed daughter, is a melancholy theme throughout the movie. El met and fell in love with her in the second movie, "Desperado." Since then, Carolina fought the cartels at El Mariachi's side, or perhaps, more to the point, at his back. Beautiful and dangerous, she used little cross-shaped throwing knives to kill. She and her daughter were killed by Marquez before El could prevent it.
Minor characters, all dead:
Nicolas - the traitor who betrays El Presidente to Marquez and agrees to help Sands. He says, "I am not the prince. I am the man behind the prince. He is not the first prince I've worked for, nor the first one I've betrayed." He does have the grace to be sick from the stress after receiving his payoff, though. He gets accidentally killed by a soldier in the fighting.
El Cucuy - His title means "the boogeyman," or something near to it. Scary-looking thug who works for Sands and has to put up with Sands's patronizing. When Cucuy says, "I don't think . . ." Sands cuts him off with, "Are you a Mexican, or a Mexican't?" (either the best or the worst line in the movie, according to various fans) Cucuy opens the movie by murdering an innocent man in El Mariachi's village, in order to smoke El Mariachi out. Cucuy shadows El Mariachi, on Sands's orders, to provide "protection," but decides to sell El Mariachi to Barillo - not on Sands's orders. He gets what comes to traitors when Barillo accepts El Mariachi, but has Cucuy killed.
Dr. Guevera - A sadistic and inventive surgeon who helps select the look-alike they plan to murder in Barillo's place, and who, presumably, created the horror-movie device with which he drilled out Sands's eyes. Ramirez shoots him, thereby avenging his partner, whom Guevera had tortured to death.
Belini - One-eyed contact of Sands's. He claims to not be a greedy man and actually takes less payoff for his information than Sands offered, hoping that will make him less liable to be a target in the overall scheme of things. Later, he stalls giving Sands what he wants, "enjoying this temporary position of power." The position is very temporary, since Sands shoots him from beneath the table moments later, when Sands's false arm ruse is revealed.
Domino - (Not in this movie) El Mariachi's lover in the first movie. She is killed at the end of that movie, by cartel men.
Bucho - (Not in this movie) The name by which El's brother, Cesar, was known to his men. Unbeknownst to El, in the second movie, his brother had become a drug lord called Bucho. Though conflicted about it, El does kill him at the end of "Desperado," thereby saving himself and Carolina.
Campa and Quino - (Not in this movie) Two of El Mariachi's friends in "Desperado." They are both killed in the final shootout.
Fandom resources:
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif){kind=small}
agentsands community (not to be confused with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
agent_sands which is a faux journal someone has created for Agent Sands)http://agentsands.proboards25.com/index.cgi (Living La Vida Loca archive and forum)
http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/Agent_Sands/ (Agent_Sands yahoogroup)
http://imdb.com/title/tt0285823/ (IMDB listing)
http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/onceuponatimeinmexico/ (movie trailer)
Please let me know if there are resources I should have included!
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And I'll assumed that your icon is Agent Sands, and not Michael Jackson, like I originally assumed. :) Can't wait to read some recs in this fandom.
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Er, Michael Jackson? No, no. Definetly Sands. It's a detail from a larger work by Latino artist George Yepes, who often illustrates OUaTiM for Robert Rodriquez. It's not fanart; he's a pro. I could have included a link to his website in "resources," but most of his work is Catholic religious iconography. Maybe I should put some words on my icon, but nothing brilliant has ever occurred to me.
Glad you liked the overview! I'll get going on some great recs here shortly.
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And there's nothing wrong with that! :-)
I signed up to pimp a "small fandom" back in March, so I've had since then to work on it. If you get your overview done, they let you cut to the head of the line (and the line is long) so I had incentive.
What's tricky, IMO, is selling the fandom to people who haven't seen the movie. My write up feels fragmented and all over the place to me, but, well, that kind of describes the movie. *rolls eyes* The weird thing is, knowing the details of this movie really isn't that important for enjoying most of the fic. That's why I listed all the dead people and labeled them dead. They mattered to the integrity of the movie, but you're not going to run into them (much) in fanfic.
And, let me just say again how delighted I am to see you writing in this fandom again! ::happy dance::
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Absolutely. The plot, when written out, is so convoluted...and yet the movie itself is rather simple. All that plotting and scheming is more backstory than anything else.
And, let me just say again how delighted I am to see you writing in this fandom again! ::happy dance::
*blushes* Thank you!
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http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=hippediva
That is the link to the memories section that has ALL her OUTIM fic - and it will rock your world!
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here and here
and have included a link to her memories at least once. I have at least one more rec of a story of hers planned before the month is out (I'm waiting until closer to Hallowe'en) and I'll be sure to include the link to her memories.