With its almost nonexistent production cost and unanticipated success, Robert Rodriguez's El Mariachi has become a legend among independent filmmaking. The work of an unheard-of 23-year-old director who reportedly acted as a drug-test guinea pig to finance his project, the film represented the ultimate rags-to-riches fantasy, a Blair Witch Project for the early '90s. If El Mariachi gained fame for the circumstances of its making, it endured on its merits as a film. Simple, unpretentious, and addictive, its strengths rest largely on Rodriguez' storytelling abilities, specifically his skill at weaving a sustained narrative out of the simplest plot contrivance. Bare-boned, charming, and crackling with unforced freneticism, El Mariachi is a reminder of the cinema's simpler pleasures, where bad guys carry guns and grudges, good guys carry guitar cases that contain only guitars, and justice is served sunny side up with a helping of deadpan humor.