Dumb with a capital D, but in all the best ways; If you like your films fast, gory and ridiculous, don’t look any further than Machete.
Machete has strange origins, originating as a 2 minute fake trailer for Robert Rodriguez’s Quentin Tarentino’s film, Grindhouse. If you’ve seen the trailer in all its generic ridiculous action movie-ness, you may well doubt the possibly of turning the idea of a machete wielding Mexican into something resembling a full length feature. Well Rodriguez not only manages this, but he manages this with some style.
Machete follows...well ‘Machete’, played by Danny Trejo, a hyper-grizzly badass Mexican Federale, who, after being betrayed, beaten and left for dead in probably one of the most ridiculous opening sequences to a film ever, finds himself as an illegal immigrant in Texas looking for work. Here he is approached by a shady American business man, Michael Booth (Jeff Fahey) and is hired to assassinate a local Senator, played by Robert De Niro. Obviously things quickly turn against our moustachioed hero and soon he is on a quest for revenge to find those who had betrayed him. Throw in a Underground Group helping to smuggle Mexicans into American soil run by the mystical ‘she’, a US immigration officer in the form of Jessica Alba, Border Vigilantes, Machete’s arch Nemesis ‘Torrez’ (Steven Seagal), a Priest with a Shotgun and naked Lindsey Lohan – as well as gallons of CGI bloody, ridiculous fight sequences and some excellently cheesy one liners – and we have ourselves as ridiculous a motion picture as anyone could ever have hoped for!
From the opening scene to the final showdown, Machete keeps the action coming hard and fast and it is probably one of my favourite aspects of the film that the action just keeps on coming and Rodriguez manages to keep the characters seemingly in constant conflict with little pause for reflection. Machete will happily turn up at any opportunity to murder dudes, and conversely scenes with Machete are almost always quickly followed by some crazy action. Machete is sleeping – crazy action follows, Machete is in hospital – crazy action follows, Machete is texting - crazy action follows. Perhaps sometimes this feels somewhat contrived, with Machete turning up in places you wouldn’t really expect him to, such as immediately after an altercation in a limo between a number of other characters being one example, but really this does little to reduce the plausibility of the feature and this helps to keep the pace of the film high throughout.
The action itself is brutal – limbs will fly, heads will roll, intestines will be used to rappel down the side of a building - yet brutal in a way which is both self-referential and with the tongue placed firmly in the theatrical cheek and hence never made me feel unconformable – this is certainly rarely the intention. In fact for the majority of these scenes I couldn’t help but laughing almost continuously, something which I’m sure was precisely intended; some action is just plain silly in the best way, with people surviving after being shot in the face, or talking for extensive periods after being stabbed. Sure the blood is almost exclusively CGIed in, but for me that did little to detract from fun of the piece (as it does in more serious films), only adding to the low budget grindhousy atheistic of the film.
Obviously there can’t be balls out action all the time, but those dialogue heavy scenes continue on the ridiculous atmosphere throughout, though sometimes this boils down to knowingly cliché one liners and action movie tropes, some which fall slightly flat, but the majority remain enjoyable. Mostly though, for each scene with little action, you can rest assured that just around the corner something completely ludicrous is probably about to happen.
For a film as ridiculous as Machete is, there is actually rather a lot going on, with a dozen different parties all playing their roll in the major story and I think Rodriguez does an excellent job of tying in these different parties without making the plot overly confusing, and also in tying them altogether in the end. It also managing to keep the film ridiculous at all costs while also putting forward a undercurrent of criticism of the American handling of Mexican immigration – or at least some thought on this debate – though to say that it’s a film with a message would be going a bit far.
Obviously the praise cannot only be laid at Rodriguez’s door and the actors certainly aid the film’s success. Danny Trajo is nothing but over-the-top-crazy throughout, with his deep gravelly voice spewing one liners and his continual expression of stony faced anger in the face of stupidity, he is perfect for the role. For the most part, all the actors seemed to have embraced the ridiculousness of the feature, most notably Robert De Nero and Jeff Fahey along with Michelle Rodriguez. Obviously for each great casting there are some questionable ones, Lindsey Lohan and Jessica Alba being the main culprits, but for the most part they are good enough to keep the story going and Lohan especially is really only present to be naked a bit.
In the end, if you love ridiculous action flicks like me, you will most definitely enjoy this film and I would say that it would entertain even the most serious of film goers (you know the ones who have seen Citizen Kane 5 times). In terms of sheer beautiful stupidity, it’s probably one of my favourite films in a while, in fact, I kind of want to go and watch it again.
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