| Under Siege |  |
 |
Gangs of New York |
 |
Desperado (1995)
|
Only in a Robert Rodriguez movie could someone bring a knife to a gunfight and wreak this much havoc. Of course, it helps when that someone brings not just a knife but dozens of knives, neatly stored in a stomach-covering leather belt. Thanks to a budget one thousand times greater than the one he had to work with the first time, Rodriguez’s 1995 sequel/remake to his indie breakthrough “El Mariachi” was heavy on the hardware – look closely, and you’ll see the 12-shooter penis pistol that Sex Machine wore in Rodriguez’s next movie, the vampire gorefest “From Dusk Till Dawn” – which is what makes the scene with Danny Trejo, the De Niro to Rodriguez’s Scorsese, so spectacular. From the moment he appears onscreen, punching the keys on a payphone using one of his knives instead of his fingers, Trejo has your undivided attention. His money shot, however, comes much later, when he unwittingly draws the attention of the goons of local drug lord Bucho. Despite the fact that the goons are armed to the teeth and protected by an armor-plated limousine, Trejo still manages to kill half of them, thanks in large part to the limo’s sunroof. Trejo, of course, doesn’t survive, but that hardly matters; he brought knives to a gunfight, and still put a good half-dozen people down. Hell, yes.
 Under Siege |
 Gangs of New York |