Anti-Climacus

QUOTE: From the Slate review of Once Upon a Time in Mexico:

"Early in Robert Rodriguez's Once Upon a Time in Mexico (Columbia), there's a scene that could have driven audiences nuts with excitement. Handcuffed together, the guitarist action hero El Mariachi (Antonio Banderas) and his wife, Carolina (Salma Hayek), elude a score of assassins with automatic weapons by leaping from a high window and descending like a Slinky from fire escape to fire escape—the first hurtling through the air as the second slams into an iron platform, then the second doing the hurtling and the first the slamming. Cool! There's a problem, though. The scene is a flashback in the middle of an already confusing sequence, and the audience has no idea why the two are handcuffed together or even who's chasing them. And if you say, "Duh, they're handcuffed because they'd been, like, captured, and then got away, and the guys who are chasing them are, like, bad guys," it's still, like, "Who gives a damn?" Without a setup or a clear narrative function, there's no emotional heft: It's just a bunch of flashy tumbles and a lot of noise."