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You know what is an odd assertion? That you can fool all of the people some of the time. Of course, that’s not something you need to do, by and large, especially on the film front. You just have to blur the margins just enough and you can turn a movie into a box office success. In 2001, that’s what The Mexican did.
It’s apt to be talking about The Mexican with, 25 years later, another Gore Verbinski movie in the offing. That would be Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, which appears to be a bananas movie that Verbinski is allowed to make because he directed The Ring, Rango, and three Pirates of the Caribbean movies. That’s cache. The Mexican was Verbinski’s second film, and the first was Mouse Hunt. As such, The Mexican was sold on Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts.
We should stress sold as a Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts movie. The trailers, the movie posters, it’s all about those two movie stars together. In terms of plot, all you may have gleaned was that a gun was involved. That gun was the titular Mexican.
Pitt is in this movie. So is Roberts. They play a couple. All of that is true. They are also barely in the movie together. They are barely in the same location within the film. The advertising was a bit of a bait and switch. Not in a “Drew Barrymore in Scream” way, either. Purely the hope was to sell “Pitt and Roberts” but deliver “Pitt” and also “Roberts.”
It worked. The switcheroo came in a movie that is also pretty mediocre. In March 2001, The Mexican made $147.8 million. Budgets reports are anywhere between $40 and $57 million (and in those instances we lean toward believing the smaller number, actually). That’s a hit. Hey, Verbinski’s mediocre movie had two movie stars. They just weren’t in the movie all that much together.
