The Mexican
**1/2
Cinema
Releases - April 27, 2001
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. 123
minutes. Directed by Gore Verbinski. Written by J.H. Wyman. Starring Brad
Pitt, Julia Roberts, James Gandolfini, J.K. Simmons.
If you had to do a favour for a gangster to save
yourself from being killed, and your girlfriend whined that if you cared
about her you'd spend the day with her instead, you'd think that was pretty
selfish, right? Well, that's exactly what Julia Roberts does to Brad Pitt
at the beginning of "The Mexican".
Samantha (Julia) gives Jerry (Brad) an ultimatum
-- either he gets the afternoon flight to Las Vegas with her, as promised,
or she breaks up with him. "If I don't go, I'm dead!" he declares incredulously,
but Samantha doesn't seem to be listening. "I give and I give and I give!"
she whines, when she is clearly doing no such thing.
You gotta hate women like that -- irrational,
egocentric, shrill. And you also gotta agree that it's a pity to waste half
a movie's screen time and the talents of the charming Miss Roberts on such
a bitch of a character.
Jerry, on the other hand, is a likeable guy; as
Samantha puts it, he "Forrest Gumps his way though" situations, and is an
adorable slapstick hero. "The Mexican" sees him having to go south of the
border to retrieve an antique pistol, and before two days have elapsed he
has already almost started a bar fight trying to find the owner of the gun,
carelessly let the guy get shot, lost his rental car after storing the pistol
inside it, resorted to a donkey for transportation, and lost the
donkey.
Goofball humour like this can sometimes be lame
stupid, but here it's fun stupid, because Pitt is a great actor, and knows
how to play the hapless fool without going over the top. There's nothing
show-stopping about any of Jerry's misfortune, but his scenes are at least
more fun than those involving Samantha, whose idiocy has the effect of
fingernails on a blackboard.
Her tale is a cross-country trip with a mafia
hitman (James Gandolfini), who has been sent to watch her by Jerry's employers.
They are unaware of the break-up, and are threatening that if he bungles
his mission, she's dead. Nonetheless, there is a light comic tone -- Samantha
forms a little friendship with the seemingly impenetrable tough guy, including
extracting a secret from him that starts out amusing but quickly turns into
something of a gimmick.
Sitting here, unable to write a very clear or
focused description of the plot of "The Mexican", I become reinforced in
my conviction that it's a rambling comedy without much drive or interest.
There are plenty of amusing moments, and we spend so much time with the
characters that by the end we're kind of involved, but that's about it. And
I still hate Samantha.
COPYRIGHT©
2001 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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