Machete

A shrewdly edited trailer has, above all of course, economic importance: studios and filmmakers want to entice filmgoers with a teaser that will part them from their precious time and $10 (or upwards). As I began to attend films quite frequently during childhood, I became almost as critical of them as the films they advertised. Some were just vague enough to intrigue for further investigation (the way it should be, IMO). Others, especially the ones produced these days, seem to outline the entire movie. Some are quite awful, but then turn out to be good films and vice versa. There are also those that seem to play all their best scenes, leaving no surprises.

I very clearly recall seeing the trailer for GOODFELLAS and thinking, "another mob movie?" I almost didn't go see it. Of course, I learned it was and is an essential movie, one of my Top 25, for certain.

The trailers produced in the 1970s were a special breed. Particularly the ones for exploitation cheapies. Gravel-voiced narrators uttered hyperbole after hyperbole announcing the latest horror, cheerleader, women in prison, or moonshine chase pic. Some of them played entire scenes! This was before MTV-style editing, of course. You might even get a flash of nudity in one of 'em. Not that you need another time waster, but the curious can find those long-ago gems for BIG BAD MAMA or FIGHTING MAD and their ilk on YouTube.

Back in 2007 Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, both cult/trash film connoiseurs, released GRINDHOUSE, comprised of two separate feature length films paying tribute to those sorts of things that mainly played in older, sleazier moviehouses and drive-ins. In between the features were mock trailers, including ones for fake horror films called THANKSGIVING and DON'T. They were dead-on target.

There was also one called MACHETE, a revenge story of an illegal Mexican hired to assassinate a Texas senator who wants to fence the border and deny amnesty. When the mission turns upside down and Machete is betrayed, he exacts bloodthirsty payback, mainly with his namesake weapon. It was brilliantly produced, very much ressembling those old previews. It was appearently a huge hit with GRINDHOUSE audiences (I did not have the pleasure of catching it in the theater).

So in 2010 Rodriguez responded, along with co-director Ethan Maniquis, by exanding this concept to feature length and here we are. Machete was once a Federale whose family was butchered by an ex-Federale who became a powerful, well connected drug dealer (Steven Seagal, in some fun casting). Some time passes and Machete is hanging out on the border, waiting for rich Americans to pick him up for some day labor. One of them, a slicked back stuffed shirt named Michael Booth (Jeff Fahey) offers 150K to have an ultra-conservative senator named McLaughlin (Robert DeNiro, with an intermittent Texas accent) bumped off. Reason? The senator wants to deport all the illegals and this would upset Booth's profitability of having cheap labor.

But it's all a set-up. At trigger time another shooter on another rooftop fires and wounds both Machete and the senator and Machete finds himself hunted by everyone, including an ICE agent (Jessica Alba, whose acting skills are, well, she does look awfully pretty) who eventually learns the truth and teams up with the now-outlaw. There's also a taco truck vendor named Luz (Michelle Rodriguez) who moonlights as "She!" a rebel who organizes an underground network of chambermaids, kitchen staff, lawyers, doctors, etc, who work like everyone else but are always at the ready for the call for revolution. Violent, if necessary. In a movie like MACHETE, you bet your culo.

Lindsay Lohan is also on hand, playing Fahey's Lolita-ish daughter, as is Don Johnson, almost unrecognizable behind sunglasses and sporting considerable heft as a bounty hunter named Von, and Cheech Marin as Machete's brother, a shotgun-toting priest. There is a lot of mayhem. There are also letter perfect parodies of political ads featuring McLaughlin, railing against those "parasite" illegals, complete with didactic narration and "I approved this message". I also laughed out loud during one of the political rallies, a McLaughlin supporter holding a sign of Uncle Sam that reads "I WANT YOU.....TO SPEAK ENGLISH"!

Does the movie live up to the fake trailer? I don't think anything could have, but I got more or less what I expected. Veteran supporting actor Danny Trejo plays the roadmapped faced badass so naturally that I'll have trouble seeing him play any other character. Machete was actually introduced in Rodriguez's first SPY KIDS movie, which was family friendly. MACHETE most certainly is not. The titular weapon meets a lot of flesh and arterial sprays are visible in many scenes. The violence, however, is so grandiose as to be cartoonish. The grossest scene to me was when a woman removed a cell phone from her vagina. I think by now you've decided if this is a movie for you.