Review: The Mexican

Brad Pitt plays Jerry. Jerry’s kind of an idiot. Employed by mobster Bernie (Bob Balaban), Jerry is sent to Mexico on a mission to find and retrieve the title antique handgun, much sought after. Jerry’s girlfriend Samantha (Julia Roberts) is pretty pissed off that Jerry (who, as I’ve said, is an idiot) would rather go gallivanting across Mexico than head to Vegas with her, with Jerry figuring it’ll be a quick job and he can meet up with Samantha afterwards. Unfortunately, the job proves anything but quick or easy. Meanwhile, a fed-up Samantha has decided to leave Jerry and head to Vegas on her own, but hitman Leroy (James Gandolfini) proves a roadblock, kidnapping Samantha in the hopes of getting Jerry to hand the gun over to his employer. Leroy, however, proves to be the very reason for never judging a book by its cover. He’s a gruff guy initially resistant to conversation, but slowly Samantha starts to wear down his armour to find he’s not such a bad guy…aside from all the brutal and efficient killing. He also has a secret: He’s gay! Gene Hackman turns up late as Bernie’s boss, recently released from prison. J.K. Simmons plays another criminal associate, and David Krumholtz proves to be the least convincing Mexican since Charlton Heston.

 

Failed 2001 attempt by director Gore Verbinski (“Gothika”, the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films, “Rango”) to take two of the world’s biggest movie stars (Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts) and generate…something of interest at least to cover up the fact that the screenplay by J.H. Wyman is nothing new. Unfortunately, he’s not playing to his biggest strengths as an actor and she’s completely charmless, instantaneously shrill, and seemingly in a constantly foul mood. It’s up to a scene-stealing and frankly brilliant James Gandolfini to keep the audience awake here (though to be fair the film did do relatively OK box-office), and the man can’t quite work miracles. That’s because the other big problem the film has is one of tone. It’s either not funny enough or not serious enough, and you just never get into it.

 

It’s also not very original and quite frequently pretty boring, especially whenever we cut to Pitt (i.e. The main plot!). He’s in dumb arse mode here, and as was the case in the later “Burn After Reading”, I don’t think it’s a particularly interesting or wise use of his talents. It’s a good-looking film, as you’d expect from Verbinski and cinematographer Dariusz Wolski (“The Crow”, all of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films, “Sweeney Todd”), but for a comedy there’s not a single laugh in it, and the main stars aren’t interesting enough to care about. Why does Julia Roberts look so damn miserable in every film since the year 2000? Has she lost her passion for acting? Every time she smiles on screen now it looks incredibly forced. Am I the only one noticing this?

 

The Morricone-esque music score by Alan Silvestri (“Flight of the Navigator”, “Young Guns II”, “Forrest Gump”) is pretty good and miles ahead of his wannabe Morricone score for “The Quick and the Dead”, where it was laughable and called needless attention to itself in serious scenes. Here, it actually adds life to an otherwise pretty enervated film, as does J.K. Simmons in one of his better performances in my opinion. There’s also a solid cameo from Gene Hackman, but by then the film is nearly over. I do miss seeing Hackman on screen these days, though. 

It’s not an awful film, just a misfired, overlong, and instantly forgettable one.

 

Rating: C