The final installment of writer/director/editor Robert Rodriguez’s Mariachi trilogy, “Once Upon a Time in Mexico,” is a prime example of style over substance. The jack-of-all-trades Rodriguez bypasses cinema requisites like plot, coherence, characterization and script for loads of stylized action and manic editing.

With the Columbia/Tri-star DVD release, the story is still muddled and nonsensical, but the studio had the sense to pack the disk with enough goodies to make a mediocre film worth owning.

The plot – if it can be called that – revolves around the retirement of the now mythic, but still nameless, Mariachi being brought out of retirement by a rouge CIA agent stationed in rural Mexico who needs Mariachi to kill a drug kingpin named Barillo. Along the way the viewer gets numerous twists, turns and double-crosses as the film eventually degenerates into rogue guitarists battling a horde of bad guys set against a backdrop of thousands of bullets.

If it all sounds a little complicated, that’s because it is. The only saving grace to the film is Rodriguez’s ability to pace his gunplay into a beautiful ebb and flow of quick cutting and varying angles and camera movements.

Rodriguez may be the most highly-stylized director in mainstream Hollywood, but it would serve him well to start making films of other people’s scripts rather than remaining the most famous one-man-band in the industry.

The extras save the package as the disc offers a veritable “how to” for any aspiring director. Rodriguez’s commentaries, documentaries, and vignettes all revolve almost exclusively on the craft and art of film making. He even continues his “10 Minute Film School” in which the director gives humorous but useful insight into making movies creatively.

Everything from direction to music to characterization is covered as Rodriguez explores his craft. The DVD works as a whole to not only mask a mediocre film but give insight into filmmaking.

While the extras earn an A+, the film itself is a complete disappointment when taken in context alongside the goofy but entertaining “Desperado” and the no-budget “El Mariachi.”