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diversions:
movie review
'The Mexican'
is far from exciting
By Alex Roman
On-line Forty-Niner
The success of
a film is often gauged by the chemistry the actors have with
each other. This chemistry often gets the audience to want
nothing more than for the two people to wind up together by
the end of the movie.
"The Mexican,"
while not being a complete loss, is a fine example of how
important on-screen chemistry is.
The film is an
example of what goes wrong when actors have no chemistry together.
However, all is
not lost thanks to James Gandolfini's film-saving effort as
a henchmen, who finds plenty in common with his kidnap victim,
Julia Roberts. Interestingly, it is only Roberts' and Gandolfini's
spark that makes this film watchable.
Brad Pitt plays
Jerry, a bumbling idiot who has spent the last five years
of his life paying off a debt to a mob boss by working for
him. Despite his girlfriend Samantha's (Roberts) wishes, Jerry
goes to Mexico in order to retrieve an antique pistol known
as "The Mexican."
Angered by his
persisting selfishness, Samantha takes off to Las Vegas where
she is soon kidnapped by Leroy (Gand-olfini), who plans to
hold her for safekeeping until Jerry successfully returns
the pistol.
What transpires
are three separate stories; Jerry's trip to Mexico to retrieve
the pistol, Samantha and Leroy's trip to Las Vegas, and the
legend of the pistol and why it is so sought after.
Meanwhile, "The
Mexican" suffers for almost every single moment that
Pitt is on screen. His trip into Mexico is neither interesting
nor funny, and you can tell about 10 seconds after he arrives
there that this will be the case.
Even the people
who are chasing and attempting to double cross Jerry are highly
stereotypical, in that Quentin Tarantino intelligent-and-insightful-thug
type of way.
As for the pistol,
its story does hold some drama, but that is not made evident
until a cameo by Gene Hackman, who plays Jerry's boss, delivers
a powerful monologue about the reason he sent Jerry for the
gun in the first place.
As for director
Gore Verbinski, the only thing that you can do is wonder how
a studio trusted a film with two sure-fire stars to a guy
whose previous credits include "Mouse Hunt." But,
credit should probably be given to the film's cinematographer
Dariusz Wolski.
In short, this
movie only works when Gandolfini and Roberts are on-screen
together and we can only hope that Pitt and Roberts don't
team up together again any time soon.
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