Synopsis: Somewhere in a foreign country, there is car accident that is by no means a massive one by American standards, but in whatever foreign country this is in, it’s being treated as if it were a Kobayashi-maru; completely unsolvable and debilitating the entire road system. Not lost on the irony is the fact that the incident appears to be the fault of a woman, subtly driving in that knife a little bit more about the stereotype that women can’t drive.
Regardless, Ray Liotta happens to be in a taxi that’s entangled in this web of traffic, and seemingly exasperated by the notion that he’s not going anywhere, simply gets out of the cab and walks off. Also note, he doesn’t pay for his cab fare.
The sound of excessive force is used to announce his arrival into a shanty local bar, where he approaches the bartender, says absolutely nothing and just stares at him. All the other patrons are paralyzed in the presence of Ray Liotta, while he continues to stare at the bartender, who procures a shot glass and a bottle of unnamed, supposed low-shelf tequila.
The staring contest continues with no words being exchanged, and after a tick in the cheek of Liotta, he supposedly wins this stare down, and the bartender switches to a bottle of 1800 tequila, pours a shot that Liotta is now content with, and the commercial ends with him chuckling in great victory over having intimidated an elderly bartender into “upgrading” his tequila from unnamed to 1800.
I’m not entirely sure I understand the commercial. The first 11 seconds are amazingly more pointless than the rest of the commercial, as I’m guessing they’re trying to establish Ray Liotta as this intimidating international man of mystery. But then the context of the entire commercial becomes even more pointless and contextually ambiguous with the Liotta versus bartender stare down.
I scoured the interwebs to see if there were any logical explanations to the context of the campaign, or the significance of having Ray Liotta in it; and there wasn’t any. But the funny thing is the fluff written here about how they got Ray Liotta to participate in the campaign. For starters, they write as if anyone under the age of 25 actually knows who Ray Liotta even is. As good a film as Goodfellas was, it’s ancient history today, and Ray Liotta is not a relevant actor anymore. Getting Ray Liotta was probably the easiest task in the world for the ad agency, because it probably went like this:
“Hello, Mr. Liotta? Would you like to be paid and get a free trip to Buenos Aires, to film some 0:30 second tequila spots?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll send the paperwork.”
“Okay.”
I get that the tagline of this 1800 campaign is “enough said,” and that they’re trying to drive home the point that international tough guy Ray Liotta doesn’t need to say anything to get 1800 tequila, but I’m just going to put this out there; in just one word, he could get a vastly superior quality shot of tequila with like “Patron,” or “Avion.”
