Machete

 

Probably my first “Mexploitation” movie. I don’t think a whole lot of those exist.

It’s based on a fake trailer that was attached to the Grindhouse movies, starring the omnipresent character actor Danny Trejo. The trailer made it look like a straight-up exercise in badassery with little in the way of plot or story, just explosions, babes, and killing. The response to the trailer itself was quite warm, so Robert Rodriguez decided to make a movie out of it. I guess he figured it would be too hard to keep it at the insanity level of the trailer for 105 minutes so he dug up a plot and started piecing it together.

It ended up as something of a commentary on illegal immigration and the current stupidity surrounding it. I’m not sure if this made it stronger or weaker, as I haven’t really been at all emotionally involved in that mess, and I still don’t really care much after seeing this movie. It gave Machete a reason to go around wreaking havoc I guess so it works well enough.

The action varies in quality. There are some pretty wacky scenarios, including a weed-whacker and improvised swinglines, that helped to keep it from getting too brutal to handle for some, but again I’m not sure if they added or detracted from the feel I was looking for; they certainly made it less than what the trailer seemed to be portraying. They actually built the film around recycled scenes from the trailer, which I guess makes sense since trailers are pieces of movies; they just did it backwards. The thing is this loses some of the fluidity because they couldn’t quite match the intensity of the smaller-scale trailer with the budget they had.

Still, Danny Trejo is awesome, and the Jessica Alba / Michelle Rodriguez duo was pretty smokin’. Steven Segal I could have done without. Jeff Fahey, now pretty well-known after his stint with Lost, played a pretty despicable character very well, and Robert De Niro succeeded in personifying the stereotypical conservative republican politician. Even Lindsay Lohan had an okay role although her acting talents weren’t the highlight.

Altogether it was a fun romp in a somewhat flawed film; you might dismiss the flaws as being intentional for the kind of movie it is, but I’m not sure I can.