Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
9/11/10
One
of the dominant themes of the 2010 movie schedule has been a yearning for
the action heroes of old, be they of the goofily iconic TV variety (The
A-Team) or the bone-crunching cinematic kind (The
Expendables). It's not surprising that Robert Rodriguez, who's
made his career doing Good For You kid's movies, ultra-violent genre flicks
and nothing in between, pines for a brand of movie justice even more retro,
the sleazy grindhouse flicks of the 70's. Your first clue, of course,
was that he directed half of The Weinstein Company's Grindhouse
double-feature (that was Planet Terror for those of you scoring
at home), and the second was complimenting it with a fake trailer for a
Mexploitation action movie called "Machete". Now that everything
new seems to be old again, it's a perfect time to do Machete for
real, and fake trailer stars Danny Trejo, Jeff Fahey and Cheech Marin reprise
their roles. On the one hand, this is hard-core 70's exploitation
trash, jam-packed with gruesome violence and sleazy sex. But Rodriguez
also mixes in his trademark sense of humor and a hyper-political story
about a crooked politician and his plan to seal the US-Mexican border for
the benefit of Big Business and a drug lord. And there may be no
more entertaining aspect of Machete than its cast: not only
does Trejo headline a major studio movie for the first time, but he's joined
by an astonishing lineup of stars like Robert De Niro and Jessica Alba,
character actors like Michelle Rodriguez and Marin, rarely seen but fondly
remembered Fahey and Don Johnson, and the pure WTF presence of Steven Segal
and Lindsay Lohan. Not only should this collection pretty much assure
that everyone who's ever been in a movie is within at worst three degrees
of Kevin Bacon, but they mesh surprisingly well. Machete feels
like the Insane Exploitation Movie Company Picnic, and while its worst
excesses are real head-shakers, for the most part I was happy to be a guest.
Mexican
Federale Machette bursts into the compound of drug lord Torrez (Steven
Segal) to rescue a kidnapped girl. But it's a setup, and he ends
up watching his wife die at Torrez's hands and is left for dead.
Years later, he surfaces on the other side of the Border in Texas, where
illegal immigrants are assisted by The Network, a loose underground railroad
of sympathetic souls who try to get them settled into jobs. The Network
is run by She, a mysterious woman who's really taco truck worker Luz (Michelle
Rodriguez). Luz helps Machette out while he makes money as a day
laborer, and he's approached one day by businessman Michael Booth (Jeff
Fahey) with an offer he can't refuse: assassinate anti-immigration
Senator John McLaughlin (Robert De Niro) or die. Machete has no intention
of finishing the job, but there's a second shooter in play, and McLaughlin
gets shot in the knee, just the boost his flagging campaign needs.
But to preserve the illusion of Machete's guilt, the fall guy has to die,
and Booth sends one hired goon after another to kill him, without success.
Good Soldier Immigration Officer Santana Rivera (Jessica Alba) discovers
Machete's true identity and joins his brother (Cheech Marin), a Priest,
in helping him to unravel the conspiracy supporting McLaughlin and his
plan to build an electrified border fence. It includes not only Booth,
but homicidal vigilante Von Jackson (Don Johnson)... and Torrez.
At
its worst, Machete's juvenile crudeness is almost pathetic:
a subplot where Booth has an unhealthy interest in his daughter April (Lohan),
who co-stars in online porn with her mother (Alicia Rachel Marek) almost
seems to embarrass the movie, Machete going all John McClane swinging from
one floor of a building to another from a hired goon's intestines can't
make the jump from dumb to dumb-funny, and don't get me started on where
the naked girl in the opening sequence has been hiding that cell phone.
But when it stays within itself and sticks to hot women, nasty villains
and Machete settling scores with sharp objects, it's a lot of crazy fun.
As in his early films like Desperado and From Dusk Til Dawn,
Rodriguez (here co-directing with his longtime editor Ethan Maniquis) has
a knack for humorously inventive violence, and watching Machete swing his
namesake in a circle and take off five heads in the process certainly is
a hoot. Weaponry aplenty gets trotted out, mounted on all manner
of vehicles and deployed to slash, impale and blow up pretty much every
part of the human anatomy, although the film takes pains to assure us Machete
only brutally murders bad people.
Befitting
an homage to a time when they didn't care what your movie said as long
as it included the right amounts of violence and nudity, Machete
spends a great deal of time grinding its ax on the state of the US immigration
debate. McLaughlin is pretty much the ultimate B-movie Senator when
it comes to the issue: not only does he propose draconian measures
to ship all illegals back across the border only after using them as slave
labor to build his fence, but he even goes out in the field and murders
them alongside Jackson and his vigilante goons. It's in assembling
his network of supporters that the movie is at its most perceptive.
Sure, he inflames a radical fringe with his rhetoric to help get out the
vote, but his financing comes from those who see those policies only as
an opportunity to make money. Otherwise, Rodriguez's thoughts
on the subject stick to the tone of most of what you hear on the immigration
issue: simple-minded rabble rousing. I don't know how the scene
is intended to play, but Santana gets a big speech late in the game where
she rallies a group of illegals to rush to Machete's aid with more and
more simpleminded bumper sticker catchphrases, culminating in “We didn't
cross the border! The border crossed us!” The way Alba grows
in stature and conviction the less substance there is in what she's saying
is actually striking something very true about the nature of rhetoric,
but I suspect it's something that escaped the notice of the people who
actually put the scene together. But in Rodriguez's defense, it is
hard to get psyched up to chop somebody's head off over a nuanced philosophical
discussion.
In
part because of his frequent appearances in Rodriguez's films (he played
an unrelated character named Machete in all three Spy Kids movies),
Trejo has steadily built a cult following and finally gets his first lead
role as the stoic righteous killing machine who “don't text”. While
I wouldn't be getting ready to cast him in Shakespeare in the Park anytime
soon, he's more than up to the challenge of driving this kind of ironic
mayhem spectacle. I'm a big believer in Jessica Alba's untapped potential
(see The Eye for a hint of what she can do when
given a chance), and this is a good role for her, allowing her to be tough
and funny in turns even while, true to the movie's retro sensibilities,
she screams every single time violence breaks out. Michelle Rodriguez,
like a lot of this cast, has limited her opportunities with her off-screen
issues, but she's also a star in the making and gets a chance to show why
here in a role that allows her to be both vicious and virtuous. Marin
(also a Rodriguez regular) has perfected an ability to play characters
who are totally morally neutral and do the right or wrong thing as necessary
with an equal shrug of the shoulders, and it's always an entertaining act.
But
it's on the bad guys side that you're really gonna see something here.
De Niro relishes the chance to play a character who's ironic-funny rather
than funny-funny, and he pours on the Texas smarm that passes for charm
in politicians to amusing effect. B-movie stalwart Fahey is really
great in the biggest A-movie role he's had in quite some time, laying on
the menace while he's in control, but also doing a great job of unwinding
as things turn against him and really nailing his exit line. Johnson,
the great TV star who's had precious few quality movie roles over the years,
still oozes charisma and star power and makes a solid militiaman.
And, yes, there's Steven Segal, amusingly spending most of the movie on
a video monitor in front of a succession of green screen backdrops, finding
that being a supervillain really requires nothing different than what he's
been doing as an action movie hero all these years. His exit is another
one of those times when Rodriguez lets his inner 16-year-old get a little
too clever, but there's no denying the kick of watching Machete match wits
with an evil Mason Storm. Heck, he even calls our hero “hard to kill”
(of course, De Niro also drives a taxi at one point; Machete don't
do subtle). Only Lohan's appearance didn't do much for me:
after burning her reputation as a person and an actress (and I'm as big
a booster of her best work as anybody) to the ground with bad behavior
and repeated arrests, this kind of skeezy role isn't going to bring her
back. And, honestly, I don't think she plays it that well, even without
considering how often and blatantly April is actually played by a body
double.
Chris
Cooper, offered the McLaughlin role, called the Machete script “the
most absurd thing I've ever read”, and viewers not on Rodriguez's wavelength
will probably agree. It helps to have an affection of the cheesy
tropes of genre movies past, really helps to have an affection for this
big, crazy cast, and doesn't hurt to be itching to see business interests,
crooked politicians and their assorted cronies get some payback (come on,
even if you agree with McLaughlin on immigration, don't you still want
to punch him just because he's a Senator?). Machete's a wild,
uneven ride, but it's one I wouldn't have wanted to miss. |
