Evening Standard from London, Greater London, England • 30

30 THURSDAY 19 AUGUST 1993 Alexander walker SUDDEN death is still the best calling card a new talent can present The debut feature of 24-year-old Texan Robert Rodriguez is called EL MARIACHI (Cert 15 81 mins) It's been made with a beginner's budget $7000 so small that even a beggar might have spumed it But it packs the kick of a Sergio Leone actioner and the body-count of a Sam Peckinpah blood-bath More important however for fixture it also has a self-parodying wit and a cinematic skUfixmess that continually refreshes the story It shifts the violence closer to the tone of boulevard farce with its mistaken identities switched belongings and madcap bursts of hide and seek great to find this green shoot of talent in the present Hollywood desert capture with the hiss of an express train A trio of female bodyguards ready their automatic weapons as if they were a close-harmony singing group And the traditions of South American machismo are honoured and mocked often in the same shot It all moves at top speed Partly this is due to financial economy Rodriguez seems to have used lots of of film stock the bits and pieces filmmakers have left over when shot their scenes So he constructs his story in a brisk flurry of filmic images that keep the eye alerted by the continuously changing scene There must be more rapid-fire cuts in El Mariachi than in all the new movies put together Here at long last is a movie that really moves I recommend it enough It gives the word a good name a A nomadic young mariachi performer or bar-room guitarist hits a dusty town in the Mexican outback played by a cherubic-faced kid Carlos Gallardo who also happens to be the co-producer In no time at all mistaken for a ferocious hit-man carrying a similar but much more lethal guitar case Both of them become the moving targets of the local Mr Big a honcho with a bad habit of striking matches off the stubble on his henchmen's chins After giving the roving execution squad the slip in a series of inventively choreographed chases the lad takes refUge with a Mexican spitfire (Consuelo Gomez) whose pit-bull keeps a red-rimmed eye on both of them The rest of the appointment with death and destiny Latino-style is worked out to a split-second wasted though virtually everyone and much of the town is laid waste But it's the jokey freedom with which Rodriguez has called the shots that hooks your eye and ear The sound of a car cornering at speed accompanies a badhat swivelling his yellow eye round the saloon A dozy informer spots the wanted man and then in a caricature of criminal collusiveness springs into speeded-up motion to telephone the boss People take off to avoid SUPAFON ES THIS WEEKS SUPER PHONE PUERTO ESCONDIDO (Cert 16 110 mins) Italian comedy by Gabriele Salvatore who made Medi-terraneo which begins wittily bank manger caught in cross-fire wakes up to discover the cop sitting by his bed is the assassin and then dips quickly into low three when the hero takes refrige with the hippies in Mexico and becomes converted to their lifestyle othing but the Anuntes OTHER QUALITY PHONES AT OUTSTANDING PRICES WITH 16 BRANCHES THERE IS BOUND TO BE ONE NEAR YOU i if father Street digital the nghtmi 473i 73443 Oft 3M im Cwhwy nnntam CKthtm IOm Must Oydof mi juiiij Mll8MOUr simnwoitu (omtiins withMorairtt win oitntiiu wcit limn WW Young Paco any humdrum girlfriend Trim Or will he be seduced by the htsty uridow next door? Victoria Abril stars in Vicente Aranda's masterpiece on love sex and death Screening on Thu 19 Aug 6J0 NFIT indudes TfeGuanSan Interview with die director immediatefy JoBowing adHtmci screenings Fti 2 Aug 845 NFT1 Sat 28 Aug 615 Nn2 Member Mbrnadore 071 IIS 1374 Qvdk Card Bookfee Advance Reservation Free Listings Brochure 071 928 3232 HOT SHOTS PART DEUX (Cert 12 87 mins) is an extended skit on the Rambo movies with Charlie Sheen as a Stallone-type super-hero sent into a Middle East dictatorship by a Gerald Ford-like president (bumbling Lloyd Bridges using his earhole as a pencil sharpener and throwing up in the Japanese prime minister's lap) The purpose of the mission: "To rescue the men who went in to get the men out who went in to get the men out" Oh and Incidentally to kill a guy The guy lwk lilcft Rnmam TTncfln with a lisp and in one of the subtler gags has the pale mark of a bra outlined in his suntan Director Jim Abrahams and his co-writer Pat Proft make sure that at least one joke in every trots has a sharpness that stands out from the well-worn context The best is the dig at Apocalypse Now in which father Martin Sheen chugging up river for his appointment with the heart of darkness passes his boat going downstream for his date with destiny in the Arab state called Ahardplace Cries announ B1 slyer th swashbk candl breaks his par traditiq: exits tab ask wh 0800 591819 bfi on iko South Bank.