A 'LEAVE CUTE' MOVIE 'THE MEXICAN': A BRAD-JULIA ROMANTIC COMEDY IN NAME ONLY.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Writer

Having Julia Roberts fall in love with your movie is a problem most directors would give their left arm to have, but Gore Verbinski was a little nervous about the whole idea.

You probably don't know Gore Verbinski's work. And that's why he was antsy - he figured Roberts didn't, either. The UCLA graduate had spent his career making music videos and television commercials before being tabbed to direct DreamWorks' kiddie comedy ``Mouse Hunt'' three years ago. For his follow-up, Verbinski pursued a script called ``The Mexican,'' which he saw as being a quirky, low-budget crime caper romance, the kind of movie that could put him on the map as a filmmaker.

DreamWorks liked the screenplay and gave Verbinski the go-ahead. Then, just as he was about to begin casting, the studio's co-chairman, Jeffrey Katzenberg, called Verbinski and said, ``Give me two weeks to see if I can find a movie star.''

Enter Roberts, one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, the Oscar- nominated actress for ``Erin Brockovich,'' who had a string of hits with ``My Best Friend's Wedding,'' ``Notting Hil'' and ``Runaway Bride.''

``One of the things that I love about this movie is that you can't pigeonhole it,'' Roberts says.

But that type of praise only gave Verbinski a bad case of the jitters.

``I was constantly being told by Jeffrey and (DreamWorks co-founder) Steven Spielberg that they believed in me and they were going to make this movie with me,'' Verbinski says. ``But the reality is if Julia Roberts wants to make the movie but doesn't want to make it with me, they're going to make it with Julia Roberts. So I more or less had to audition for her.''

Verbinski passed. Now the question is: Will ``The Mexican,'' an oddball movie that just happens to star Roberts and Brad Pitt, pass muster with audiences? And, just as importantly, will audiences feel cheated upon leaving what Verbinski now calls ``the Brad and Julia movie,'' having learned that the film's two stars barely share any screen time together?

But as Roberts points out about the film, ``You can't put a little romantic-comedy ribbon on it or a drama ribbon on it. It is what is, which is chaos.''

That's no exaggeration. In ``The Mexican,'' Pitt plays Jerry Welbach, a perpetual screw-up indebted to the Mob. When Jerry's boss sends him to Mexico to retrieve an antique pistol, he must choose between keeping his life or keeping his grating girlfriend, Samantha (Roberts), who has long since lost patience with Jerry's crime capers. Jerry smartly chooses life and heads south of the border, only to learn later that a Mob hit man (James Gandolfini from ``The Sopranos'') has taken Samantha hostage.

J.H. Wyman's original screenplay tosses in mistaken identities, stolen identities, closeted sexual identities and Mexican curses, bouncing between genres as freely as a bullfrog on a caffeine bender. The movie is an unlikely star vehicle, something the participants know better than anyone.

``I wondered if it would work sticking Julia and me in it,'' Pitt says. ``I think the other characters would have gotten more play if somebody else had done this.''

Roberts sees it differently, ``Of course, I wish (Pitt and I) had more to do together, but at the same time, I think that it all serves a purpose. It's complete. Nothing's missing from the movie.''

Verbinski's view falls somewhere between them: ``It never seemed like the kind of movie where we needed big stars.'' He then adds that that offbeat quality may make it a perfect change-of-pace vehicle for a couple of big stars.

``Most Julia Roberts movies are designed to service her and what she is and what she does best, and I feel like there's so much else she can do, stuff we haven't seen,'' Verbinski says. ``And it requires her and her people and her collective audience to embrace her and allow her to do different things. Brad has done that in his career. Now, I think, it's her turn.''

Roberts' character in the movie is certainly more of a prickly pear than anything she's ever done. (``She's just such a mess, but a sweet mess,'' the actress says.) Pitt, following diverse turns in independent-minded films like ``Fight Club'' and ``Snatch,'' continues to subvert audiences' expectations, playing a good-hearted dunderhead.

``I call Jerry the anti-McQueen,'' Pitt says, referring to the King of Cool, Steve McQueen. ``The challenge was: How big can you get? How goofy? And seeing it, I would have liked to have gone a little larger, actually. Like that great conniption Tom Cruise had in the bathroom in '(Jerry) Maguire.' I've actually seen him do that, so to make fun of it was really bold. I really respected that.''

Between Pitt's own conniptions and Roberts' constant carping, you've got a whole lot of image-shaking going on in the movie. That's why DreamWorks demanded that stars slash their salaries and back-end profit-sharing by more than half and that Verbinski bring in the film for $35 million, an amount, the director wryly notes, that's less than Brad and Julia usually make collectively.

That turned ``The Mexican'' into probably the only low-budget movie that will ever feature both Roberts and Pitt. (The two will soon be making Steven Soderbergh's update of ``Ocean's Eleven.'') Verbinski shot three weeks in Las Vegas (for the scenes with Roberts and Gandolfini), four days in Studio City and four weeks in Mexico, primarily in the little-known, one-time mining town of Real de Catorce.

This was a down-and-dirty, hand-held, one-light-and-a-bounce-card, two-takes-and-move-on, half-the-crew's-in-the-john and rotating-in-and-out kind of movie, Pitt says. As an actor, you just flip something out there, hope it connects and move on to the next scene.

Pitt and Roberts have exactly one scene together early in the film before Pitt's character heads to Mexico and Roberts meets up with Gandolfini's hit man. The two aren't reunited until late in the game, so that one scene had to say just about everything about Jerry and Samantha's relationship.

``Basically, I had to talk really fast to get it all in,'' Roberts jokes.

Whether moviegoers believe she got it all in and accept the paucity of screen time between the two stars remains to be seen. Verbinski says he has been very concerned ever since December when DreamWorks began putting up billboards all over town with images of Pitt and Roberts together.

``It's nerve-racking to me the way it's being presented,'' Verbinski says. ``I mean, you can't avoid seeing it presented as the Brad and Julia movie, but I never thought about it that way when I was making it.''

So Verbinski is nervous again, but for a different set of reasons. But the man does have some perspective on the situation.

``I hope people will go, but I know one thing. It's going to be very hard to lose money on a $35 million movie with Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts,'' he says.

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo: (1 -- cover -- color) Hot and hotter

Brad and Julia talk about how a spicy script drew them to `The Mexican'

(2) no caption (Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt)

(3) James Gandolfini is a Mob hit man who kidnaps Julia Roberts in ``The Mexican.''