Reception
Once Upon A Time in Mexico was released on September 12, 2003 in 3,282 theaters with an opening weekend gross of USD $23.4 million. It went on to make $56.4 million in North America and $41.8 in the rest of the world for a combined total of $98.2 million, well above its $29 million budget.
The film received a generally positive reception with a 68% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 56 metascore on Metacritic. Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "Like Leone's movie, the Rodriguez epic is more interested in the moment, in great shots, in surprises and ironic reversals and closeups of sweaty faces, than in a coherent story". A.O. Scott, in his review for the New York Times, wrote, "But in the end, the punched-up editing and vibrant color schemes start to grow tiresome, and Mr. Rodriguez, bored with his own gimmickry and completely out of ideas, responds by pushing the violence to needlessly grotesque extremes". In her review for USA Today, Claudia Puig wrote, "In Mexico, Rodriguez has fashioned a swaggering fantasy that pays homage to spaghetti Westerns such as Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Plenty of blood is shed, lots of powerful artillery is fired, and action sequences provide astounding car crashes and fiery explosions". Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "B" rating and praised Johnny Depp's performance with its "winking grace notes of Brandoesque flakery ... is as minimal and laid-back as his Pirates of the Caribbean turn was deep-dish theatrical".
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