A very low-budget ($7,000) first feature by Robert Rodriguez (1993) that’s juicy, adroit, and likablean action picture set in a town on the Mexican border, where a mariachi musician (Carlos Gallardo) and a hit man (Reinol Martinez) arrive at the same time, both carrying guitar cases. Not only are they mistaken for each other by the various henchmen working for an Anglo drug baron (Peter Marquardt) who wants the hit man rubbed out, but the musicianwho’s already being shoved out of his traditional art by Muzakwinds up becoming a killer simply to stay alive. The whole thing can be read as a potent satirical allegory about an independent third world filmmaker like Rodriguez forced to imitate and sell out to his Yankee exploiters to survive: the drug baron, like a Hollywood producer, spends most of his time lounging around a pool served by a bimbo in a bikini, and the film itself was distributed by Columbia, which promptly signed Rodriguez to shoot a $6 million English-language remakea form of humiliation that obviously constitutes ultimate success in many people’s minds. Consuelo Gomez plays the feisty heroine. (JR)