MACHETE: Halfway To Grindhouse Glory

The fea­ture film ver­sion of  Machete has always seemed like an against-the-odds propo­si­tion.  It began as a faux trailer in Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s ill-fated Grindhouse epic.  The result became pop­u­lar enough with cult movie types to inspire plans for a fea­ture film ver­sion that would reunite trailer stars Danny Trejo, Cheech Marin and Jeff Fahey.

Rodriguez and com­pany suc­ceeded in get­ting it made with an impres­sive cast and also get­ting it dis­trib­uted via 20th Century-Fox… but Fox didn’t seem very inter­ested in pro­mot­ing it and dumped it out on Labor Day Weekend, a noto­ri­ous dead-zone in the film dis­tri­b­u­tion biz.  Thankfully, the results are fun to watch if uneven and much more in tune with the spirit of clas­sic exploita­tion fare than other recent attempts (that was directed at you, Piranha 3D).

Machete kicks off in splat­tery style via a fun pro­logue that reveals Machete was once a mem­ber of the Mexican bor­der patrol before run­ning afoul of Torrez (Steven Seagal), a nasty crimelord who mur­dered Machete’s wife in front of him and left him to die in a burn­ing house. Cut to the present: Machete is qui­etly eking out an exis­tence in the States as an illegal-alien day-laborer when a mys­te­ri­ous man named Booth (Fahey) approaches him with a $150,000 offer.  Booth asks Machete to assas­si­nate Governor John McLaughlin (Robert DeNiro!), a white-is-right type run­ning on a plat­form of “kick the ille­gals out,” dur­ing a cam­paign rally.

Machete takes the gig but is set up to be a patsy.  He nar­rowly escapes with the help of Luz (Michelle Rodriguez) and sets out to bring the whole house of cards down as Booth and Torrez (who is behind every­thing) attempt to smoke Machete out with the help of Border Patrol hon­cho Stillman (Don Johnson).  Meanwhile, immi­gra­tion agent Sartana (Jessica Alba) tries to track Machete down before the bad guys get him.  It all cul­mi­nates in a gang fight-style finale filled with gun­fire, mus­cle cars and the title weapon.

The fin­ished prod­uct is what we’ve come to expect from Rodriguez (who co-directed this film with Ethan Maniquis), mean­ing that it has its strengths and its weak­nesses.  On the strengths side, Machete is ener­getic and packed to the brim with action scenes fea­tur­ing wild gim­micks (the best involves Machete escap­ing from a shootout using one thug’s intestines as an escape rope).  It also ben­e­fits from fun per­for­mances by a game cast:  Trejo is suit­ably tough, Marin gets the laughs and Fahey, Seagal and DeNiro tear into their vil­lain­ous roles with hammy aplomb.  Also wor­thy of note are Michelle Rodriguez, who gets an above-average tough chick role to work with for once, and Don Johnson, who dis­plays unex­pected grav­i­tas as an ice-cold villain.

Unfortunately, Machete also has some notable weak­nesses that come into focus once the fre­netic buzz of watch­ing it wears off.  Rodriguez has a his­tory of rush­ing through the film­mak­ing process and that can be felt here in dif­fer­ent ways.  The script has a ton of cool ele­ments and char­ac­ters that aren’t always used to the best advan­tage: for instance, the female char­ac­ters get lit­tle to do in the finale and one char­ac­ter gets a big inspi­ra­tional speech moment that really should have gone to the hero.

More importantly, the lead char­ac­ter ends up being a cipher in his own cin­e­matic vehi­cle.  It’s obvi­ous that Machete is intended to be a quiet man of action but that’s no excuse to give his char­ac­ter no arc what­so­ever.  He’s almost entirely defined by how oth­ers react to him.  Even Charles Bronson got more to work in his 1980’s-era pot­boil­ers than Trejo does here.  This is a shame because he proved his dra­matic chops a while back in Honeybaby and should have been given a lit­tle more room to show that he is more than mus­cles and a mean face.

Finally, the biggest prob­lem with Machete might be that its action sequences actu­ally get less inven­tive as the film goes along:  a church-set shootout suf­fers from indif­fer­ent stag­ing and the finale is lit­tle more than a bunch of shots of peo­ple shoot­ing off guns hastily inter­cut with ran­dom scenes of extras brawl­ing.  When a film opens as strongly as Machete, it really needs to keep upping the ante as it goes along.  Like so many ele­ments in the film, the finale could have been mind­blow­ing — and it’s annoy­ing to see it set­tle for being slapdash.

That said, Machete is a still a fun pro­gram­mer.  It doesn’t hit the heights of Rodriguez’s best work but it has a raw energy and sense of fun that car­ries it through.  More inter­est­ingly, Machete is one of the few mod­ern pseudo-exploitation flicks to reflect the polit­i­cal under­cur­rent that some­times popped up in clas­sic exploita­tion.  The film is at its best and most spir­ited when it is tak­ing some pointed, satir­i­cal shots at the anti-immigration/fence-up-the-border mania that being hotly debated in the U.S. (the cam­paign spots for McLaughlin, which boil with faux “tea party” rage, are eas­ily the film’s fun­ni­est gags).

In short, Rodriguez needs to slow down and take a lit­tle more time with his work but this film shows he’s got a stronger knack for deliv­er­ing grindhouse-inspired fun than most of his com­peti­tors.  Whatever its flaws, Machete still deliv­ers the excite­ment and risky con­tent that made clas­sic exploita­tion cin­ema fun.