Machete started life as a “fake” trailer that preceded the theatrical release of the Tarantino/Rodriguez double feature Grindhouse; response was so good that director Robert Rodriguez decided to adapt it into a feature film.
Another trailer, Hobo with a Shotgun (which preceded the Canadian release of Grindhouse), has also been adapted into a feature-length film. I wonder if a precedent has been set.
That Machete trailer was a perfect little piece of filmmaking, and probably better than the actual movie. But the movie delivers the goods (all scenes and themes accounted for) and then some: numerous additional characters and subplots, and even a socio-political message.
Machete (played by instantly-recognizable character actor Danny Trejo) is a Mexican Federale whose wife is murdered before his eyes by drug lord Torrez (Steven Segal).
Segal, in his first theatrically-released film in nearly a decade, is hugely disappointing here: too soft-spoken to effectively play a villain in an exploitation movie, too past-his-prime for any convincing combat. Thankfully, there are no less than three other actors chewing up the scenery in villain roles.
Three years later, Machete shows up outside a Texas taco stand looking for work as a day laborer. The stand is run by Luz (Michelle Rodriguez), who fights for the illegal aliens that surround her, and monitored by Yvette (Jessica Alba), a policewoman tracking illegals.
Another policeman, Von Jackson (Don Johnson), enjoys hunting and killing illegal aliens for sport; in his first scene, he shoots a pregnant woman, rationalizing “if it’s born here, it becomes a US citizen.”
Machete finds work, but not the kind he’s looking for: businessman Michael Booth (Jeff Fahey) hires him to assassinate Senator John McLaughlin (Robert De Niro), who is basing his re-election campaign on getting rid of the illegals in Texas, and building an electric fence to keep them out. Fahey steals the show here with a surprisingly mannered performance; De Niro has less to do, but hams it up wonderfully when he gets the chance.
Like the individual Grindhouse releases, Machete has been modeled after a 1970s exploitation film, and it effectively captures the feel: it plays fast, loose, and unfocused (like most of the director’s films), with excessive cartoon violence and gratuitous nudity. Of course, modeling a movie after low-budget drive-in fare – no matter how well it’s done – isn’t going to appeal to everybody.
What surprised me about Machete was the timely, relevant issue of illegal immigration. Now, it brings almost nothing to the table – the good guys are illegal aliens, the bad guys are anti-immigration, and that’s about the extent of it – but it’s right there, front and center throughout. Rodriguez deserves some amount of admiration for this alone.
My one real qualm here – and it’s the same problem I had with Sylvester Stallone’s similarly-realized The Expendables – is the overuse of CGI, particularly in explosion and blood splatter effects. That’s the one thing on prominent display here that you wouldn’t find in a 70s exploitation movie, and it always kills the vibe when it’s too noticeable.
