There’s a common idea in movies that restrictions spark creativity, that needing something drives innovation, and that you don't require Hollywood funding to tell a good story. Often, this is just hopeful thinking from people who haven’t attempted to film a feature with very little money and borrowed equipment. Then there’s El Mariachi, Robert Rodriguez’s celebrated first effort, made for around seven thousand dollar…

This 1992 film marks Robert Rodriguez’s first directorial effort and centers on a guitar player who arrives in town coinciding with a bar shootout involving a gangster and similarly dressed individuals. Initially, the situation seems like a simple case of mistaken identity, but it appears the Mariachi musician gradually accepts the part of an outlaw assassin eliminating those controlling the area—or at least that’s w…