Film Review with Robert Mann – Machete

1st December 2010

Machete ***½

In 2007, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino came together to write and direct Grindhouse, a sort of passion project for the two and a film that could perhaps be viewed as quite a bold experiment on their part. You see, Grindhouse was not just a film, it was a loving homage to and an attempt to recreate the experience of the 80s exploitation double feature with which the term ‘grindhouse’ has become synonymous.
Grindhouse (referring to a downtown movie theatre in disrepair since its glory days as a movie palace known for “grinding out” non-stop double-bill programs of B-movies) was presented as one full-length feature comprised of two individual films helmed separately by each director as well as four fake movie trailers, three of which were written and directed by other prominent filmmakers including Eli Roth, Edgar Wright and Rob Zombie. The two films themselves were Robert Rodriguez’s super gory zombie horror Planet Terror and Quentin Tarantino’s car fuelled revenge thriller Death Proof while the fake trailers came in the form of horrors Thanksgiving, Don’t, Werewolf Women of the SS and, most famously, actioner Machete. Grindhouse was a colossal failure at the US box office; people simply did not get what Rodriguez and Tarantino were trying to accomplish, many cinemagoers allegedly walking out after Planet Terror finished because they didn’t realise there even was a double bill and subsequently the film was divided up for international release, the two films being released independently of one another without the fake trailers, aside from Machete that is – and it is for that one trailer that Grindhouse has become most famous. Their double feature experiment may have been something of a disaster commercially but there was certainly enough interest in the fake Machete trailer for Robert Rodriguez to think that making it into a real movie might be a good idea. Hence, we have what is probably the first ever case of a film trailer preceding the inception of the film itself. Machete the movie comprises of footage that had originally been shot for the trailer but obviously that alone was not enough and Rodriguez has had to film around this footage in order to turn it into a full length feature, and to match the tongue in cheek style of the film he had delivered a cast line up every bit as out there, with Steven Seagal, Lindsay Lohan and Don Johnson joining a cast that also includes Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba and Michelle Rodriguez in addition to Rodriguez regulars Danny Trejo, Jeff Fahey, Cheech Marin and Daryl Sabara. Machete has certainly been preceded by a considerable amount of hype but does the film actually live up to the trailer that inspired it?

Machete (Danny Trejo) is one of the best federales in Mexico and always get the bad guys but all this changes when his family is murdered and he is left for dead by Mexican drug lord Torrez (Steven Seagal). Three years later he is hiding out in Texas and trying to forget his tormented past but soon finds that his past has caught up with him after he accepts an offer by ruthless businessman Booth (Jeff Fahey) to assassinate corrupt US Senator John McLaughlin (Robert De Niro), a hardliner on immigration policy whose potential election to office and association with Mexican hating vigilante Von Jackson (Don Johnson) threatens the futures of all Mexican illegal immigrants in Texas. Machete soon discovers that he has been set up in an elaborate plan to get the Senator elected to office and that the person behind everything is Torrez. With the authorities after him, he must go off the grid to both survive and deal with those who have framed him, ‘crossing paths’ with Booth’s wife June (Alicia Marek) and daughter April (Lindsay Lohan) and getting help along the way from taco-slinging revolutionary Luz (Michelle Rodriguez), sympathetic immigration agent Sartana Rivera (Jessica Alba) and padre Cortez (Cheech Marin), a priest who is great with blessings but better with a gun. What starts out as a personal mission soon becomes something so much more as he finds himself becoming the figurehead of a massive revolution in which Mexican illegal immigrants go to all out war with Jackson’s vigilante army, a war from which only one side can emerge victorious.

Just as was the case with Grindhouse, I strongly suspect that not everyone will really get Machete. This is a film made with a very specific target audience in mind and if you fall into this target audience you will likely find much to enjoy; others on the other hand will probably fail to see what all the fuss is about. If the aim here was to recreate the 80s exploitation movie experience then it’s fair to say that the film is a success. Packed full of gratuitous violence and nudity, this is one very bloodthirsty film – suffice to say squeamish viewers should steer well clear – and never shies away from showing the red stuff and then some. That said, however, as gory as the film is – and it is very gory – the film never disgusts as much as it might, never dwelling too much on the infliction of pain and injury and generally not coming across as sadistic in its depictions of brutal acts, much of the violence being very tongue in cheek – case in point a scene where Machete pulls out a man’s intestine and uses it as a bungee rope (the human intestine is 60 feet long you know). As with pretty much everything here the gore is very over the top and largely played for laughs, this film proving very funny…if you are in the target audience, so funny in fact that it may just cut through your sides in the same way that Machete’s machete cuts through bad guys left, right and centre. The action sequences aren’t just extremely violent of course but also great fun, being every bit as over the top as the blood that flows in them, the highlight being the epic climax – Machete riding in on a gatling gun mounted motorbike (a shot right out of the trailer) really symbolises everything this film is about – even if the final swordfight between Machete and Torrez proves rather underwhelming, Steven Seagal sadly not delivering many of his trademark martial moves here. The tongue in cheek style also flows in the writing, the dialogue being packed full of cheesy one-liners and innuendos – “What’s this long hard thing” a girl says, to which Machete replies “My machete” – and the story being right out of the 80s action movie mould of storytelling, stretching believability all the way. While perhaps proving a bit more complicated than you might expect, the plot is generally pretty slight but for the purpose at hand it proves quite sufficient. As you might expect from the cast line up that is present here, the acting isn’t all that great but the cast members mostly do the job they need to. If you can look past Steven Seagal’s dodgy Mexican accent and the seemingly ironic casting of Lindsay Lohan, you can see that Danny Trejo really doesn’t need to make any pretence – he really is the tough guy – Michelle Rodriguez does the tough girl thing very well, Don Johnson, Jeff Fahey and Robert De Niro make for rather amusing baddies and effects legend Tom Savini makes a cameo appearance as hitman for hire Osiris Amanpour. As long as it is taken in the sense that is intended to be – OTT tongue in cheek gleeful fun – Machete is a film that will prove very enjoyable. As a loving homage to the 80s exploitation movie it is hard to fault it but as a movie on its own terms it falls considerably short of perfection, what worked so well as a trailer feeling perhaps a bit stretched out at feature length, the film sadly not fully living up to the hype. As long as you don’t take it seriously, it is certainly an enjoyable throwback to 80s exploitation movies but you may not be too bothered about the sequel jokingly hinted at in the closing credits – “Machete will return in Machete Kills and Machete Kills Again – which actually looks like it may become a reality. So, if subtlety is what you look for in a film then it is quite obvious that Machete is not the film for you but if what you crave is an over the top blood soaked gore drenched action film that will cut through your sides like a machete chopping through bad guy after bad guy you may just be in movie heaven. I f****d with the wrong Mexican and while I didn’t love it I did rather enjoy it.

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Review by Robert Mann BA (Hons)

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