Sheldon Sands

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Sheldon Sands is a fictional character from Robert Rodriguez's third installment of his Mariachi trilogy Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Sheldon Sands is a cunning and manipulative CIA agent that is played by Johnny Depp. He is mainly the catalyst of the movie and the movie's anti-hero. Though he is primarily known to be the "bad guy" througout the movie he tends to be playing both sides of good and bad to achieve his goals. He is also very fond of his favorite dish puerco pibil.

[edit] Personality

Sands is somewhat of a calm, distant, yet violent and smooth talking character. He is mainly a sociopath that will kill someone without the slightest hesitation. Robert Rodriguez even described him as a "mass murderer" and how lovely the character turned out at the end of the movie. He also has a charming side to him which makes him eccentric. This shows when he is talking to Eva Mendes' and his many discussions with Antonio Banderas' character throughout the movie as well. In contrast to a great deal of other sociopaths, Sands has moments of cowardice. Towards the middle of the movie he is shunned by the CIA and left hanging in Mexico after his mission comes to a sudden halt. He scurries around the city trying to run and hide from the people he felt were following him; signs of paranoia.

Towards the end of the movie, however, Rodriguez reveals Sands as a hero. Deep down Sands was in fact a hero, but it was never revealed until Sands really had a chance to prove it. During the final standoff between Sands and two of his enemies he tells a little boy (whom he had been using as a seeing eye dog to guide him around the city after having his eyeballs taken out) "I don't hear you running?" Implying for the boy to get out of harms way and let him handle things.

Sands is shown to be quite witty, cleverly using words to his advantage. In the opening scenes of the movie when he is talking with Cheech Marin's character-Belini-he gives him $10,000 for the information he has provided for him. When he gives the money to Belini he says "I couldn't find a briefcase small enough for ten thousand dollars in cash." Upon saying this he hands the money to him in a Clash of the Titans lunchbox, almost as if to make Belini feel foolish for asking for so little money. Also, towards the middle of the movie when Sands first meets the little boy, he displays wittiness. The little boy offers Sands bubblegum and keeps nagging at him to buy some. Sands finally agrees and instead of pulling out money to buy the money he pulls out a ten dollar bill and says "this should hold the both of us over for quite a long time, so, I don't want to ever see you again." The little boy replies by saying "gracias senor" and Sands points his finger in a direction away from him and tells the boy calmly "fuck off."

Another trait of Sheldon Sands' character is that of his cleverness. In all of the scenes in which he was talking with Belini, Sands is wearing a fake arm with his real arm underneath the table weilding a silenced pistol pointed directly at Belini. Sands may do this because he feels he must keep the advantage on his enemies, or he could do this just because he can't wait to strike and kill somebody, or he's just paranoid. Sands' cleverness mixes well with his manipulation abilities. He persuades Banderas character to join his side by bringing back nightmare pasts to Banderas' character. He also uses his manipulation to persuade Ruben Blades' character (which is a retried FBI agent) to come back to the work force to catch a notorious drug cartel leader, portrayed by Willem Dafoe. He does this by reminding Blades' character how his partner was brutally tortured and murdered by Dafoe's character. His cleverness goes to another level when Eva Mendes' character comes up to him and tries to kiss him just before she tries to kills him, she says "see anything you like?" Sands then shoots her in the gut, takes off his fake arm, and reveals how the gun was hidden and says "No."

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Sands is a calm, violent, manipulating, anti-hero, who seems to pull one out for the good guys at the end of the movie. Rodriguez wanted the audience to feel that they actually liked this character at the end of the movie despite corrupt the character intended to be. Sands transformed into the second part of his character by the end of the movie-a blind, gunslinging hero.