The production cost of $7,000 has been mentioned with such frequency and insistence in conjunction with this title that one had begun to wonder whether it was a boast or an advance apology. Or a part of the title. Or a big fib. Presumably the $7,000 figure does not include the transfer from 16mm to 35mm (giving the image the variable look of covered-with-volcanic-ash and strained-through-a-sieve and printed-on-sandpaper and decomposing-before-your-very-eyes) nor the spiffing-up of the soundtrack nor the subtitling. It nevertheless looks like more movie than could be bought for a mere, a minuscule, a microscopic $7, 000 -- at least two or three times more. The plotline, a mistaken-identity thing in which a wandering mariachi gets targeted by mob hitmen, is no more than a pretext for a portfolio of chases and shootouts and bad dream scenes. (I.e., dream scenes that are bad, not simply scenes of bad dreams.) And as a job application, if as nothing else, the movie is an indisputable success for its twenty-three-year-old director, Robert Rodriguez. (1993) — Duncan Shepherd