"'The Mexican' Backfires"
by Scott Mantz

"The Mexican"
Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts
Directed by Gore Verbinski

Brad Pitt shows Julia Roberts the way of the gun in "The Mexican"

I don't get it. Why would a filmmaker go through the trouble of getting two of Hollywood's biggest stars to appear together in the same movie, only to end up keeping them apart until the last possible moment? That approach may have done wonders for Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in the 1993 hit "Sleepless in Seattle," but in most other cases, it's more of a tease. Even though 1995's "Heat" clocked in at almost 3 hours long, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro only shared about 10 minutes of screen time together. More recently, "Hannibal" clearly missed the point of its much superior predecessor by keeping Anthony Hopkins and Julianne Moore apart until the very end of the film.

Now you can add "The Mexican" to the list. Despite having Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts--two of Hollywood's prettiest stars--at the top of the bill, the film blows a good opportunity by keeping them apart until the last 20 minutes. Then again, that may have been a good thing. When they are together, all they do is argue, and when they're apart, the film degenerates into two separate--and utterly pointless--road trip movies. Maybe they should have gone north instead and called the movie "The Canadian."

Jerry (Brad Pitt) and Samantha (Julia Roberts) are your typical unmarried Los Angeles couple (which is to say that they argue--a lot). Their latest spat comes at the expense of Jerry's inability to just say no to his mobster boss, who wants him to travel south of the border to retrieve a rare gun called The Mexican. Just before a frustrated Samantha can bolt to Las Vegas, she is taken hostage by an overly sensitive hitman (James Gandolfini) until Jerry can complete his mission. As Jerry bumbles his way through Mexico, he loses the gun, his car, and his passport. Can he get out alive and--even more importantly--still make amends with his very argumentative girlfriend?

Who would have thought that a movie featuring Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts could end up being so disappointing? Pitt is charming enough as the bumbling henchman who's just one botched job away from sleeping with the fishes, but he fares much better with grittier roles (a la "Fight Club") than he does with the serio-comic turn he tries to pull off here. Julia Roberts is her usual perky self, but even she over-reacts (and over-acts) to the point where one has to wonder why Pitt stays with her in the first place.

Despite being enormously talented and beautiful, both actors fail to ignite the screen long enough to make up for the time that they're apart, and as a result, the rest of the film's flaws come shining through. The script is weak, and by trying to be funny one moment and provocative the next, the movie ends up being rather silly. Also, the mystique surrounding the gun never begins to take hold, and even a surprise cameo at the end of the film feels like a cheap shot at making it more engaging.

Perhaps the film's one saving grace comes at the casting of James Gandolfini, who makes his first big screen appearance since whacking fans with the enormous popularity of HBO's "The Sopranos." He plays the cold-blooded killer with a heart who keeps tabs on Roberts while Pitt is lost in Mexico. During their bonding moments, we learn more about Gandolfini than just about anyone else in the movie, and he's the only one that we really end up caring about.

In the end, "The Mexican" tries to pass itself off as a cross between "Get Shorty" and "Pulp Fiction" (the latter of which was produced by Lawrence Bender, who also produced "The Mexican"). One of the reasons that "Pulp Fiction" was so engaging was because of its ability to make even the most meandering conversation sound interesting, which is what "The Mexican" ultimately fails to do. Considering that it's all talk and no action, my advice for those of you who are craving "The Mexican" is to hit the nearest Taco Bell.

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