Alex de la Iglesia specialises in sometimes outrageous action movies – Mutant Action and The Day Of The Beast are his previous films. With Perdita Durango, his most ambitious movie to date, he stars American actress Rosie Perez in the title role, a drifter who meets up with her Romeo – that's his name – played by Javier Bardem, on the border between the United States and Mexico. Romeo's into witchcraft and blood sacrifices; Perdita, game for anything, suggests they kidnap a couple of blonde teenagers, Duane, Harley Cross, and Estelle, Aimee Graham.
vastly overlong and rather self-important
Perdita Durango is based on a book by Barry Gifford, who also wrote the novel on which David Lynch's Wild At Heart was based – in fact, in Lynch's film Isabella Rossellini played Perdita Durango. Like Wild At Heart, this is pretty full frontal entertainment, and many will be turned off by the scenes of rape, the graphic bloodletting and other forms of mayhem and destruction in this R-rated film.
De La Iglesia is an accomplished filmmaker, no doubt about that, and he stages action scenes with an invigorating boldness. But Perdita Durango, which is vastly overlong and rather self-important, doesn't begin to compare with his earlier movies. Part of the trouble is the casting of the two leads; Rosie Perez somehow makes Perdita a thoroughly unlikeable character, while it's only possible to comprehend about half of what Javier Bardem says. An ugly turnoff, and a major disappointment.
