While you can see why director Robert Rodriguez might want to remake his 1992 ultra-low-budget debut El Mariachi as Desperado (1995) to take advantage of a studio-sized budget, remaking it yet again would seem to indicate that he's stuck in a groove. But that's almost exactly what he's done in this third outing, which again stars Antonio Banderas as the wandering minstrel with an arsenal in his guitar case to take on evil drug lords. He's aided and abetted this time by an unorthodox CIA agent (Johnny Depp), who's the most entertaining thing in the film, possibly because he's the only genuinely original element. The action is certainly spectacular and inventive - Rodriguez is one of the best editors of mayhem around - and Salma Hayek is suitably sultry, but you can't escape the feeling that you've seen it all before.

A corrupt CIA agent Sands hires hitman El Mariachi to assassinate a Mexican general hired by a drug kingpin attempting a coup d'état of the President of Mexico.