Many scenes suffer from a mild case of the blands, and the whole enchilada could have used some tightening -- the last half-hour of cascading climaxes feels like an eternity. Sounds like I'm bitching ceaselessly, but I'm really not -- what seem to be clumsy convolutions of the screenplay are satisfactorily resolved, meaning that the yarn generally gets better as it goes along. Complaints about the stereotyping of Mexican characters and locales are probably unfounded; as the film makes perfectly clear, this is a breezy yarn about a rough-and-tumble Mexico defined by tradition and as experienced by its gringo protagonists.

Despite the marquee names, the real star presence here is James Gandolfini, who miraculously conjures up a hitman who's distinctly different from Tony Soprano in important ways, but is just as charming and conflicted. This guy, he's good.