Gay Today: Viewpoint

The Mexican

Video Review by Jack Nichols

It's been a while since I've actually gone to a theatre somewhere to see a Brad Pitt film. I confess, however, that even into the late 90's I was nearly always first at the box office whenever his name chanced to grace the marquee. But when The Mexican recently made its rounds, I somehow missed it. This week, the local Blockbuster was advertising The Mexican's availability.

Brad Pitt stars in The Mexican

As I stood at the check-out counter, I wondered at the film's title. Since George W. Bush wants to grant legal status to all three million Mexicans now living "illegally" in the USA, The Mexican, hopefully, might help me better understand my controversial new neighbors.

But would the film's portrayal of these new neighbors be accurate? Or, like those Italians who reacted to HBO's mafia hit, The Sopranos, would Mexican feathers get ruffled too? Would some South of the Border equivalent of GLAAD rise up to denounce our beloved Brad?

What I didn't know as these thoughts circulated was that James Gandolfini, the lead in The Sopronos, plays, along with Brad and Julia Roberts, a top role in The Mexican. And not only that but (where are you GLAAD?) he's "Leroy"-- a tough gay hit man! Brad's wacko-ditzy girlfriend, played by Julia, divines that he's gay. Her discovery melts her initial fears of him, turning her into what sexists of the 50's used to call a "fag hag." I must say, she's truly deluxe in this role.

A bearded James Gandolfini takes time out from his killing game, at her urging, to flirt with a geek-beak-cap-wearing postal worker with whom, at a restaurant, he strikes up a romance. Julia melts into happy tears at this development, encouraging the bashful hard-hearted killer to follow his heart.

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The Mexican: Official Site
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Needless to say, The Mexican is an attempt at black comedy. Dear Brad, as he showed in the superb black comedy, Johnny Suede, is not to be thought incapable in comedic roles. But he should have bypassed The Mexican`s script, says I, though in one scene he did prove amusing dancing about ridiculously celebrating his macho victory and shouting, "I'm a winner. I'm a winner!"

The Mexican, it turns out, is not a person. This fact, however, should be a sufficient cause for alarm if we're expected to understand our Southern neighbors through the movie title's prism. The Mexican is, frighteningly, a very fancy gun. The Mexican, in fact, is such a paean to this gun that it quite possibly may warm the cockles of Charlton Heston's penis.

In any case, since The Mexican is a trip into Mexico, we get to see Mexicans the way the film-makers see them. Drunk, Dangerous and Ugly. Brad, at least, knows that he should arm himself on his first foray into a Mexican bar, and when he exits, it is to the sound of firecrackers and gun shots against a background of a hokey Mexican horn music. While Brad's talking to a Mexican who's just finished giving him the treasured gun, a stray bullet fired in "fun" kills this ethnic wonder as he's peeing drunkenly against a wall outside the bar. The stream of his pee, however, is poorly aimed. It splashes all over his trousers.

Julia Roberts and James Gandolfini

As Brad wanders about in Mexico, we're treated to repeated examples idiot Mexicans running amuck. The "men" sneer at Americans, looking for every opportunity to cheat and rob. They are some of the least attractive male specimens on earth: dirty, stupid, and threatening.

The fact that this is a movie about a gun called The Mexican, seems to say it all about the illegals George W. Bush hopes to legalize. But the folks who ought to be happiest about this legendary gun-loving movie, Charlton Heston and the NRA will like, I predict, a line that's spoken by the gay postal worker.

"Guns don't kill people," he explains, "postal workers do."