Robert Rodriguez

10/10 for efforts, 5/10 for the result

Robert Rodriguez' first movie, before he came to the USA, and prequel to famous "Desperado". Rodriguez had no team and he shot it on his own with just about 7.000 $ budget. The movie is in Spanish, there are no famous actors and most of the roles are played by local residents. It was shot as silent film and dialogues and sound are added afterwards. Rodriguez wrote the script, gathered volunteers for roles, directed, recorded sound, did editing and everything that goes with it on his own. Something like Chaplin was doing in his time, one-man show. The story is good, the movie is mediocre, but considering how it's done this is an amazing achievement. Then Rodriguez went to America and made other two parts of Mexico trilogy, "Desperado" and "Once Upon a Time in Mexico".

I rated this movie 5/10 before I knew the background story, but it's 10/10 for effort. It definitely is worth watching.

5/10

Let's play

This is allegedly the sequel to "El Mariachi", but let's be honest, this is actually the same film made with more experience, a higher budget, better actors and better technology... and phenomenal music.

7/10

"Well, it's been one long goddamn hot miserable shit-ass fuckin' day every inch of the way"

Why the hell is average rating on IMDb just seven?! Rodriguez, Tarantino, Clooney, Keitel, Lewis, Salma, Cheech,... The story that starts as an action/crime and then suddenly twists into a horror/black comedy... And on top of that unbelievable soundtrack. What more can you expect from a movie?!

9/10

Terrible piece of shit

It is difficult to describe in words how shitty this movie is. It's not a horror, it's not a thriller, there's no humor, actors are lame, directing too… Pure action and extremely bad one too. It's hard to believe that Tarantino and Rodriguez approved this, let alone signed it... but they did.

3/10

"You have no idea what you have unleashed"

After the second part, I was at the edge of giving up on the third one. But this one actually is not bad at all. It is a prequel to the original movie, it takes place about hundred years before and tells a story about the origins of Santanico Pandemonium. It is far from the complexity and quality of the first film, but at least it is obvious that Rodriguez was directly involved in making it. While he is just executive producer of the second movie, here he is also the screenwriter and, by default, it makes the movie worth watching.

6/10

Big names in a small movie

The last part of the Mexico trilogy. Robert Rodriguez, Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Johnny Depp, Mickey Rourke, Eva Mendes, Danny Trejo, Enrique Iglesias, Cheech Martin, Willem Dafoe... simply amazing amount of big names in it, yet the movie is nothing more than mediocre. It is not a waste of your time, but I wouldn't watch it again and I am not recommending it.

6/10

"Sin City" is a neo-noir omnibus of four stories adapted from the comics of Frank Miller, directed by Rodriguez, Miller and Tarantino. Camera and directing mimic the style of comics. The film is in black-and-white technique, but some details are highlighted with bright colors (red blood, red lipstick, red dress, red sneakers, yellow monstrous blood and the like) whose contrast leaves a powerful impression and enhances the story. The cast is fantastic and packed with sexy (un)dressed beautiful women. Rosario Dawson, Benicio Del Toro, Carla Gugino, Josh Hartnett, Rutger Hauer, Michael Madsen, Frank Miller (writer, producer, director and actor in this movie), Brittany Murphy, Clive Owen, Mickey Rourke, Elijah Wood,... Such a team gathered in the same movie is quite promising. When you see Jessica Alba dancing on the stage of striptease bar you'll completely forgot about Salma Hayek's performance in "From Dusk till Dawn", and her chemistry with Bruce Willis is fascinating. An unforgettable experience that can be repeated many times. In my opinion, this is one of the greatest movies of all time.

10/10

"A Dame to Kill For" is in every way a copy of "Sin City", just telling a different story. The same team is "behind the camera", and in front of it part of the actors from the first movie reprise their roles, enriched with some other big names, such as Joseph Gordon-Levitt, magnificent Eva Green, Ray Liotta i Christopher Meloni. The only disappointment is recasting of Dwight, although Josh Brolin did a very good job. I consider "Sin City" one of the greatest movies of all time, so it could be assumed that this is a ten too. But it doesn't work like that. A perfect ten, in addition to quality in all aspects, must have something of its own, characteristic, something that stands out from the mass, which will be remembered and that will resist tooth of time. This movie, however good, is a copy of the first one that does not bring anything new and, even if it does not fall into oblivion, it will be remembered as a copy. Extremely good, maybe even as good as the original, but still a copy. I think its bad ratings are not based on objective quality, but on the disappointment of the spectators who expected to be blown away in the way that the first film did. But the same people who was amazed by "Sin City" in 2005 can hardly be amazed ten years later by exactly the same things. If they came out in reverse order it is possible that the ratings would be reversed too. Personally, I think that the film is top-notch in every way, but the effect of "already seen" affects me too, so I have to distance it from the original.

8,5/10