“You’re missing the grand design here! If I don’t go, I’m dead! Yeah. And it’s a little hard to carry on a relationship when I’m stuffed with straw and formaldehyde.”
The Mexican is an offbeat romantic comedy in the guise of a road movie. It concerns the transport of a one-of-a-kind handgun from Mexico to America. Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts star as an insufferable couple who thankfully spend little time on screen together. Instead, while Jerry (Pitt) is incompetently fumbling his way through Mexico in comical pursuit of the legendary weapon—driving an El Camino, adding “o” to the end of his English words, and adopting a vicious guard dog by accident—Samantha (Roberts) heads to Vegas where she’s kidnapped by a hitman named Leroy (James Gandolfini) to ensure that Jerry doesn’t look for a higher bidder for his parcel.
The opening scene is brilliant. Samantha rants loudly and pelts Jerry with his belongings from their apartment balcony while Jerry calmly tries to win the argument using the psychologist-approved language that their therapist has suggested. It’s cleverly written and works to set the stage but is wisely utilized only sparingly after that. Elsewhere Pitt is given carte blanche to express his natural charisma and comedic chops and the screenplay is chock full of ridiculous twists. But director Gore Verbinski wisely keeps his cockamamie plot at arms length, allowing it to amuse us but not overpower the strong characterizations that the three main cast members have to offer. In this way it manages to land in a sweet spot that is engaging yet carefree and leaves ample room for the peculiar pairing of Roberts and Gandolfini to flourish.
“The Mexican” of the title is the priceless revolver that Jerry is tasked with tracking down for crime boss Margolese (Gene Hackman). He’s only involved in the crime game because he owes Margolese—the two were involved in an automobile accident that landed the mafioso behind bars because he had a bound hostage in his trunk when law enforcement arrived at the scene. It’s easy to envision Jerry causing a car accident once we’ve spent a little time with him. He’s a hapless loser with airheaded tendencies that are only compounded by his toxic relationship with Samantha. The excuse he offers to Margolese’s underboss Nayman (Bob Balaban) for blowing his last assignment is that Samantha hid his car keys after an argument. Now, breaking his promise to Sam that he had left the criminal life behind him, he’s pulled back in for one last job.
Jerry’s quest is funny and light-hearted but not without moments of tension, adequately crafted with flair by screenwriter J.H. Wyman. He makes his way to a seedy bar to meet a fellow American named Beck (David Krumholtz) who is supposed to produce the pistol and travel with Jerry back to the States. It’s not until Beck gets killed in a freak accident and Jerry calls his colleague Ted (J.K. Simmons) for guidance that he learns that Beck was Margolese’s grandson. Yikes. While he’s on the phone some carjackers make off with the El Camino, the priceless artifact hidden in its glove box. Double yikes. The gun changes hands several times and Ted makes his way to Mexico with orders to straighten things out. Hijinks, double crosses, and f-bombs ensue. At one point Jerry deftly manages to steal back his car and the pistol by taking one of the thieves hostage at gunpoint. Since Jerry doesn’t have a rope to bind him, he kindly negotiates with the man (Richard Coca) and they agree that he’ll be shot in the foot. Three times Jerry is treated to the pistol’s sepia-toned origin story and each rendition changes what the gun means to the people who are after it.
All of that amounts to a lighthearted popcorn movie. But it’s the odd relationship that develops between the hostage Samantha and her kidnapper Leroy that really makes The Mexican worth seeing. They’re both talkers and despite their situation they soon develop an affinity for one another. Leroy’s insights into Sam’s relationship with Jerry help her to make some sense of her confused thoughts, and Sam’s empathy and pop-psychology musings help Leroy explore the unique hardship of being a homosexual hitman. Their freewheeling conversations give Gandolfini and Roberts opportunities to show off a little bit and the results are delightful. There’s one scene in particular that I really enjoyed, where Leroy combs his mustache in the mirror of the women’s bathroom while Sam suffers from stage fright in the stall. They carry on a lengthy conversation across a single unbroken take as the actors play off one another.
It’s Gandolfini who shines the brightest and it’s from his mouth that we get a surprisingly righteous definition of love. It comes unexpectedly in a movie replete with murder and hints of deviancy. As captor and captive sit on a curb, waiting for Jerry, Leroy asks “If people truly love each other, when do you say enough is enough?” He wants a serious, thoughtful answer from Sam, but she launches into an incoherent tirade about how she is a product of her emotions rather than her environment and has psychosomatic insomniatic manifestations and needs sunshine to grow. “That’s not right,” he says. “I mean, there’s a right answer here but that’s not it.”
Look, in my business you’re surrounded by loneliness, and finality. Now I don’t care what your take is on an afterlife, when people die, it’s scary. And they go alone. Now the people that I send off, that have experienced love, they’re a little less scared. I mean they’re still scared, but there’s… a calmness to ’em, and I think that comes from the knowledge that somebody, somewhere loved ’em, and cared for ’em, and will miss ’em. Now I see that from time to time, and I am awed by it. […] Anyway, it’s a loaded question. Look, when two people love each other—totally, truthfully, all the way love each other—the answer to that question is simple, especially in your case. When do you get to that point where enough is enough? Never… never.
Eventually things get a little bit too cluttered. Allegiances change rapidly, Ted claims he’s “just trying to do his portion,” Leroy turns out to be… not Leroy, Gene Hackman gives a weird fatalist monologue to explain why he specifically requested Jerry to retrieve the gun. But it’s quite a bit of fun and doesn’t take itself very seriously thanks to smart writing, Pitt’s underrated physical comedy, and the central performances.