None of whom have anywhere to go but down, preferably off a high adobe wall, in a hail of bullets. Rodriguez, while he gluts the audience's appetite for blood, fire and music, starves us for character, feeling and story. Even his most inventive sequences -- like the spectacle of Banderas and Hayek swinging down from a high window across air-conditioners and broken fire escapes, their wrists linked by a long, heavy chain -- feel disconnected and unmotivated. Who shackled them together? Why do they need to escape? What happened next? Since Once Upon a Time is, formally, more music video than feature film, such questions may be irrelevant. But in the end, the punched-up editing and vibrant color schemes start to grow tiresome, and Rodriguez, bored with his own gimmickry and completely out of ideas, responds by pushing the violence to needlessly grotesque extremes. Eyes are gouged out, legs are severed by gunfire and a bloody, fleshless face gapes on an operating table.
All in the name of patriotism, apparently. In the last shot, Banderas, over swooning and chattering guitars, kisses the Mexican flag, having saved the republic from mayhem -- at least until Rodriguez returns for more chopping and shooting.
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