El Mariachi just wants to play his guitar and carry on the family tradition. Unfortunately, the town he tries to find work in has another visitor, a killer who carries his guns in a guitar case. The drug lord and his henchmen mistake el Mariachi for the killer, Azul, and chase him around town trying to kill him and get his guitar case.
Anybody who wants to see how the [Hollywood] Process and its inducements destroy what’s cool and alive in a director should consider the recent trajectory of Richard Rodriguez, from the plasma-financed vitality of El Mariachi to the gory pretension of Desperado to the empty and embarrassing From Dusk to Dawn. Very sad
— David Foster Wallace: David Lynch keeps his head (1996)
