An average movie

Since it was the last movie directed by Robert Rodriguez which I haven’t seen so far, I was quite eager to check it out. What was also intriguing about this movie was that it was an experiment. The idea was to shoot a movie with a very small budget (7000 dollars) which was how Rodriguez did shoot his directorial debut, ‘El mariachi’. At the time, to finance his first movie, he also took part in some medical testing studies so there was definitely an interesting meta layer here. So, on paper, the damned thing definitely had some potential. Unfortunately, this movie went by pretty much unnoticed when it was released but it’s not surprising as the end-result turned out to be seriously lame after all. Of course, it did look pretty cheap and ugly but it wasn’t the main issue. Indeed, above all, even though the whole idea of a thriller taking place during some sketchy medical testing studies did sound pretty cool, they came up with a tedious and convoluted story. To be honest, you might wonder why Rodriguez didn’t simply focus on his own experience dealing with such medical studies as something more grounded would have been so much more interesting and entertaining. For example, why did they involve some cartel chasing the main character to pay some debts? Why not, instead, tell the story of a young filmmaker collecting some money for his first film project exactly like Rodriguez did at the time? To make things worse, all the actors involved (including a couple of Rodriguez kids) were just so weak and, even if they were not helped by the poor material they were provided, they were all rather pathetic. Eventually, even though it was indeed an interesting experiment, it turned out to be a failure and, if you have 7000 dollars to spend, you should probably do something else with your money than deliver such a lame movie with no prospects whatsoever. 

5/10