Danny Trejo is Machete, a quiet Mexican day laborer with a tragic past. This past is laid out for us in the movie’s prologue which involves numerous severed heads and a seductive naked woman producing a phone from the only place she could possibly have hidden it. Just to make sure we understand that we’re watching an exaggeration of exploitation movie clichés, co-directors Robert Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis have added some digital scratches to the footage. The scratches go away after the opening credits, but the jerky 70s style editing (by Robert and his sister Rebecca Rodriguez), overly pronounced musical accents (by John Debney) and of course the gratuitous violence and nudity remain.
Rodriguez’s movie has a plot that could fuel a decent thriller but is used here as an excuse to introduce a colorful cast of characters and move them from one set piece to the next. An attempt to summarize: in present-day Texas, Machete is enlisted as a patsy by Booth (Jeff Fahey), the aid of senator McLaughlin (Robert De Niro). McLaughlin has a particularly ruthless position on illegal immigration, to the point of going on immigrant hunting trips together with border vigilante Von (an entirely convincing and almost unrecognizable Don Johnson). Booth has a little side business of his own, which involves Mexican drug lord and Machete nemesis Torrez (Steven Seagal). Michelle Rodriguez (the one Rodriguez working on this film who is not related to Robert) and Jessica Alba play the forces for good in this movie, who also happen to be every man’s fantasy, what with the gun-wielding, hard liquor drinking, low-cut jeans wearing and prolonged shower pondering. Oh, and lets not forget Lindsay Lohan and her body-double playing April – Booth’s daughter – and Cheech Martin as the padre to whom Booth confesses his impure thoughts about her.
The violence in this film is extreme, but very obviously played for comedic effect. The highlight being Machete who rappels down a building using his opponent’s colon. However, there is one scene that breaks the mood and attempts to go for a more noir accent, when assassins enter a church in slow-motion with Ave Maria playing in the background. The scene is a miscue and the violence in it gets unpleasant, silencing even the group of guys sitting behind me who had until then greeted every decapitation with cheers.
Danny Trejo as Machete is of course the main attraction of this movie and he “certainly has an imposing physicality and formidable presence” (Frank Scheck), as long as he moves and speaks as little as possible. Luckily, that is the case for the bigger part of his screen time. The ladies’ man aspect of his character is unconvincing and especially his romantic involvement with Sartana (Jessica Alba) feels unnecessary. He is given dialogue by the Rodriguez cousins (Álvaro Rodriguez co-wrote the script) that feels like a collection of one-liners, containing at least one instant classic: Machete don’t text!
In the end, a review of the different elements and finer nuances of this kind of movie is rather pointless. You either sit back and surrender to Rodriguez’s vision, or you resist and focus on what’s wrong with this film. It took me a while to accomplish the former but I walked out of the movie theater with a smile on my face.
Cheat Cut 