In this movie Johnny Depp plays a renegade CIA agent getting stranded timelessly in a stereotypical Mexico (a typical silverscreen portrait of this specific geographical spot usually comprises of all things dusty, sweaty, gritty and sexy). A typical General of the Army, named Sanchez, plans a coup d'etat via the most primitive way, namely by killing the President. Depp's CIA wants it to happen because the said President is too saintly to be politically viable. But, taking his job and the agency's mission as 'restoring the balance', Depp wants Sanchez to be annihilated right after the coup, and for this job he got the legendary guitar-playing-gun-toting (the two are very much the same thing) 'El Mariachi' ('The Stringwhanger'), played by, of course, real-life guitarist Antonio Banderas. This Mariachi surely has his own plans, and some blood-spilling later, involving a bullfight, a retired FBI officer, the Cartel, a lapdog-carrying assassin, and Salma Hayek, which, except the latter (because she by then has been dead), are within Depp's overall scheme, Banderas wins the day and Mexico is saved.

Not much, aye? But you haven't seen it yet. Somehow the former maverick director Roberto Rodriguez has succeeded in generating a wholly watchable summer nothingness here. You might easily forget the title, but some scenes and characters will haunt you forever. Really.