Pistoleros: Death, Drugs and Rock N’ Roll (2022) Film Review
The story that’s ultimately told in Steven B. Esparza’s Pistoleros: Death, Drugs and Rock N’ Roll, is one you have probably heard before. Promising musicians meet temptation and a promising career is completely shattered. Some of those careers are well known and some others lie in the shadow of one-hit-wonders, band conflicts and tragedy.
Fortunately Esparza doesn’t attempt to change anything for the sake of making Pistoleros a more exciting film. This isn’t a story about a band that made everything different. You probably won’t even google their music after. However, the intimate perspective the director uses to explore the protagonists of the story is admirable and effective. You won’t be fascinated by the music of Pistoleros, Los Guys or Chimeras. But will be touched by the insides of a music career, how it was built and tumbled down, and how it lies today in the memory of those who lived through its best years.
Pistoleros is the story of musicians in Arizona who formed the band Chimeras at first. Brothers Lawrence and Mark Zubia come from a large Mexican-American family, where music was life. Their father was a mariachi and they grew up in the middle of guitar tuning sounds and strange instruments. It’s only natural they formed a band as they got older.
However, this inspiring story is full of mishaps and conflict. The Zubia brothers aren’t the only subjects of the story and a relatively dark music culture holds more secrets than we thought of. In Pistoleros, as obscure as the music may be, a musician’s attitude is fuel for something tragic, problematic and permanent.
The idea of “rock stardom”, with huge or small bands, is there to be explored by those who seek fame. The Zubia brothers approached this as any other musician you have known in the past. The idea of being successful brought them together and ripped them apart. To this day the effects remain and in an extraordinary resolution, tragedy strikes again and an incomprehensible rivalry remains resilient. How? I honestly can’t tell, but so much truth lies in the eyes of Mark, that his personality feels magnetic and impossible to solve.
Esparza decidedly stays in this tight household where friendship and brotherhood are concepts severely twisted in music bands culture. In the first half, a band has a promising growth in an era where music wasn’t huge. In the second half, a cautionary tale begins and stays embedded in the viewer’s mind. The opioid addiction has a place in Pistoleros and at first it seems too risky of an addition, but it’s hard to find a better spot to talk about the subject than this one.
Pistoleros is a music documentary like many others, but Esparza highlights a very important theme without forcing it into the story. And it’s not only about music, or sibling rivalry. There’s more and it was as relevant back then as it is today.
We need to address this.
