The Mexican

The transformation of “The Mexican” from a small, quirky road picture to a vehicle featuring two of Hollywood’s biggest stars was enough to merit a lengthy article in the Los Angeles Times recently. Unfortunately, that story turns out to be more interesting than the picture itself. Although not without its amusing moments (most of them featuring a dog, alas), “The Mexican” falls short on most counts. It is neither suspenseful nor romantic, and it is only fitfully funny. While the pairing of Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt sounds like a Mike Ovitz fantasy come true, they share very little screen time together, and never really develop any chemistry. Indeed, Roberts’s scenes with costar James Gandolfini (who plays the head honcho on HBO’s lauded “The Sopranos”) seem a lot more convincing. The picture has a slapdash, thrown together feel; director Gore Verbinski (whose most noteworthy outing so far was 1997’s “Mousehunt.”) tries for a loose-limbed, free wheeling sensibility, but winds up with a picture that is too slack and too long. In J.H. Wyman’s script, Pitt plays Jerry Welbach, a good-natured and somewhat bumbling layabout who is in forced servitude to the fearsome (at least we are told he is fearsome) crime boss Margolis (played, for all of two minutes, by Gene Hackman).

It seems that Jerry irritated Margolis five years earlier and has to repay him by serving as a low-level bag man. Now, on the eve of his trip to Las Vegas with girlfriend Samantha (Roberts), Jerry is told he must go to Mexico to retrieve an antique pistol, quaintly called “the Mexican”. Naturally this development leads to some unhappiness on the part of Samantha (who is called Sam a lot, in yet another example of a writer’s compulsion to give beautiful women sexually ambiguous names. Why is that? Some sort of repressed homoeroticism? Or simply to suggest that it is OK to commit to this woman because she is just a regular guy?). Sam, in one of the movie’s less well thought out scenes, expresses her annoyance by throwing things at Jerry from the balcony of their apartment. Faster than you can say “road movie,” Jerry is on his way to Mexico and Sam is off to Vegas on her own. It is hardly giving anything away to say that Jerry runs into one spot of bad luck after another in the course of what should have been a rather routine errand.

Meanwhile, Sam is taken hostage by Leroy (Gandolfini), who wants to exchange her for the Mexican. Leroy turns out to be one of those cinema thugs possessed of both a violent nature and an uncanny insight into the workings of the human heart. Much of the limited charm of “The Mexican” derives from Samantha’s chats with Leroy about love and commitment. Gandolfini is a fine actor and steals most of the scenes from the two superstars. Roberts puts on her trademark pluck and appeal, but it is stock stuff, and not likely to make us forget her work in “Erin Brockovich.” Pitt flings his lanky body about in a fine impression of an uncoordinated patsy who nevertheless manages to conjure up some much-needed brutality when the situation demands it. The picture does have its share of casual violence, and while certainly not extreme by current cinema standards, it does have the tendency to distance us from the characters. It is hard to really care about them at all, much less root for the two principals to get back together.

Mexico is played for laughs as a place comprised of nothing but rundown shanties, thugs, and lowlifes. (If I were of Mexican descent I might be offended.) And oh yes, then there is the much sought after pistol itself, versions of whose tragic history are depicted three separate times, which is about two times too many, thus contributing to the movie’s excessive length. There are, of course, the requisite plot twists and double dealings, the details of which I will allow you to discover for yourself, should you be so inclined. “The Mexican,” is not a horrible movie, just an uninspired one, which would have been better served by leaving it a small, low-key B-movie with a cast of unknowns. By pumping up the star wattage and the budget, the filmmakers have loaded more onto this flimsy framework than it could possibly have handled. (3/6/2001)