"Actor: Angel Aviles"

• El Mariachi / Desperado | DVD | (01/11/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Before Robert Rodriguez' El Mariachi, Mexicans in North American action films were typically maids, drug dealers or prison inmates. Even if the Cisco Kid was a friend of yours, you handled a dust cloth or a Mac-10 if you lasted in Hollywood longer than a New York minuto. But when El Mariachi crossed the border in 1992, things changed. Granted, it still involved a drug lord in a shoot-em-up but this time the good guy was a Mexican. Austin-based Rodriguez made El Mariachi for a fistful of pesos and a little help from his friends. He wrote, directed, coproduced, edited and operated the camera. Plus, he assembled a cast that had never acted before to work por nada. Desperado continues the outrageous action adventure. Working with a much bigger budget, Rodriguez returns the nameless mariachi to non-stop action. Again thrust into a world he never made, the hero takes his guitar-case arsenal deep into the criminal labyrinth of Bucho (Joaquim de Almeida), el gran chingon of the Mexican drug lords. With an amigo (Steve Buscemi) and a beautiful bookstore owner (Salma Hayek), el mariachi confronts an outrageous cast along the way, including a bartender (Cheech Marin), a drug-deal, pick-up guy (Quentin Tarantino) and the original mariachi (coproducer Carlos Gallardo) as a new-found compa'. Antonio Banderas has the lead this time, and if he's not quite up to the challenge, it's probably because he's Spanish, not Mexican, a distinction not lost by anyone raised on what the popular media now calls "ethnic food." That said, Desperado is not to be missed. Using intelligence, romance and humour--as well as plenty of explosive, surreal violence--Rodriguez again showcases the timeless struggle between the forces of darkness and light. And, in the process, he's recasting the mould for the contemporary action hero--kids now argue about who gets to play the Mexican. --Stephan Magcosta, Amazon.com

• Desperado | DVD | (21/03/2011) from £7.16   |  Saving you £1.82 (43.65%)   |  RRP £5.99

  In this sequel/remake to 'El Mariachi' a case of mistaken identity leads to a very high body count involvement with a beautiful woman who works for the local drug lord and finally the inevitable face-to-face confrontation and bloody showdown...

• Desperado - The Reel Collection | DVD | (02/10/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  El Mariachi: All he wants to be is to be a Mariachi like his father his grandfather before him. But the town he thinks will bring him luck brings only a curse - of deadly mistaken identity. Forced to trade his guitar for a gun the Mariachi is playing for his life in this critically-acclaimed film debut from director Robert Rodriguez. Desperado: Antonio Banderas Joaquim de Almeida Salma Hayek Steve Buscemi Cheech Marin and Quentin Tarantino star in this stylish shoot -'em - up described as a south-of-the-border Pulp Fiction. Director Robert Rodriguez follows up his legendary debut film El Mariachi with this sexy sequel about a mysterious guitar player (Banderas) searching for vengeance against the men who murdered his girlfriend.

• Scorpion Spring | DVD | (06/03/2003) from £7.96   |  Saving you £-0.98 (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  Two strangers pick up a desperate fugitive and his mysterious companion. They discover that nothing is what it seems and learn that the road to truth is long and treacherous and getting there can be murder.

• Desperado --Superbit | DVD | (14/10/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Antonio Banderas is the titular Desperado out for revenge against the drug-lord responsible for the death of his girlfriend in Robert Rodriguez's semi-sequel, semi-remake of his debut El Mariachi (1992). Set in a Mexican town, this is a contemporary Western that combines elements familiar from classic Sam Peckinpah movies with the post-Reservoir Dogs school of film-making. With a threadbare story and unbelievable characters acting in unbelievable ways the result is a repulsively blood-soaked comic-book treatment, in which the best scenes are bar-stool monologues by Steve Buscemi and Quentin Tarantino. The film also introduced Salma Hayek to English-speaking audiences. She's incandescently sensual here and survived a farcical rock-video-style sex scene to become a Rodriguez regular. On the DVD: Desperado is a Superbit DVD, meaning maximum disc space has been given to the film, with a data rate close to double that of a normal DVD, no extras and just a choice between Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 soundtracks. The 1.78:1 anamorphically enhanced transfer is virtually flawless, with excellent detail, accurate colours and a refreshing absence of grain. The Dolby Digital soundtrack is very good and the DTS even better, though as this comparatively low-budget film was originally released in stereo it's not state-of-the-art even when remixed. Only those with high-end home cinema set-ups are likely to notice significant technical improvements over a standard DVD version. --Gary S. Dalkin

• Desperado | UMD | (08/05/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99