el mariachi (Directed by Robert Rodiriguez. Starring Carlos Gallardo, Consuelo Gomez, Peter Marquardt)

NECESSITY , THEY say, is the mother of invention. With a budget of only $7,000 (which wouldn’t cover the bill for eye liner on an Arnold Schwarzenneger movie), first time director Robert Rodiriguez has produced a lean, mean, mother of a movie, a snappily economic thriller that skimps on everything bar entertainment.

It is a genre piece, with a familiar premise: an innocent young mariachi guitarist wanders into a dusty Mexican town where he is mistaken for a vicious hit man who carries an identical, but far more lethal guitar case. As the local Mr. Big sends his cronies to wipe out the opposition, the musician is caught in the middle of a succession of semi-farcical, fast-moving shoot-outs and chases before metamorphosing into a kind of Mad Mariachi and settling the score himself.

Rodiriguez relates this modern western (shot on a guitar string) with pace and humour, like early Sergio Leone reinterpreted as a Loony Tunes cartoon. He edits fast, creating momentum by bombarding the eye with cuts, and spices up his smart visuals with humorous sound cues. Yet, for all the cinematic inventiveness, he never loses sight of the human element of his tale, creating (with co-producer and star Carlos Gallardo) a genuinely likeable character, with a big future in bigger budget sequels.

Unlike much art house fare, El Mariachi is not a film one has to recommend simply by virtue of its budget. It succeeds in competing with (and improving on) big budget fare by virtue of its film-making.