Machete
Machete
Directed by Robert Rodriguez
Runtime: 105 min.
Spoiled alert: That over-the-top image of Danny Trejo firing a machine-gun-mounted-motorcycle while being propelled by a fireball in the Grindhouse spoof-trailer for Machete never appears in the movie itself. But Machete cheats even more than that. Robert Rodriguezs spoof-trailer promised fun, but now that the actual movie is here, he gives us idiocy. Machete combines genre spoofery with a presumptuous political message. Putting action-movie fantasy on the same level as the current Mexican border and illegal-immigrant controversy, Machete ruins moviegoers fun.
Rodriguezs betrayal starts with diminishing Danny Trejo. The haggard-faced Mexican-born actor who has vacillated between villain and hero parts for over two decades is finally cast in a mythic lead role: Machetes fierce, sword-wielding street rep hides his identity as a government agent fighting Mexican drug lords. hes meant to be a folk hero to Latinos as well as action-geeks, but Rodriguezs script limits Trejos persona. he doesnt rise above being a thugly, but resolute, ethnic badass embodying what Morrissey called Pure Mexican when recently saluting the avantrock group Café Tecuba on MTV Tr3s. Problem is, the way Rodriguez stereotypes Trejo is not avant-pop. (hes CIA, ICE, FBI all rolled into one mean burrito," a bad guy says as if racism was wit.) Silly Rodriguez does not respect the ethnographic complexities of a non-white movie hero who fights for his people while also correcting the inequalities of the American system.
In Machete, Rodriguez emulates the ruthless ambivalence of those 1970s blaxploitation movies that introduced black heroes into previously segregated genres. But appeals to contemporary audiences who dont understand the enthralling paradox turning rebels into conventional heroes. Rodriguez over-simplifies and deracinates blaxploitation tropes Tarantino-styledown using funk music in the background sex scenes. (Machete swinging from a mans entrails into a windowsill is an idiotic homage to Richard Roundtree in Shaft.) This undervalues his audiences commitment the revolution of ethnic pop. Rodriguez misses the multi-culti beauty perfected in that memorable August Darnell lyric, His mother was a Mexican/ His father was a Cherokee/ But he was All-American to me. Machete simply becomes a violent joke and Trejo, whose unexpectedly funny appearance Delta Farce was so great, isnt enough of an actor to rise about his regular pay grade. He cant keep Machete from being trashy.
Neither can Robert De Niro, who spoofs a John McCain-like anti-immigration Senator. But this context isnt subversive like the theater radical De Niros portrayed in the 1970 Hi, Mom!, Brian De Palmas first great film that brought radical theater to the big screen. Here, De Niro portrays a stereotypical right-wing bigot. With De Palma, De Niro showed how counterculture behavior didnt require sincerity to be enlightening, but with Rodriguez, De Niros conservative villainy is no more than superficial, which is abusive. Rodriguezs mix of satire and ideology makes the most puerile political comedy since Borat.
When Machete sexes Michelle Rodriguez as a taco-selling revolutionary, Jessica Alba as an ICE agent and Lindsay Lohan as a crooks daughter, the juvenile routine of his sexual potency negates the political issues. Michelle Rodriguezs boast, I sell tacos to workers of the world. It fills their bellies with something besides hate, must speak for the director. This cliché action film is as gaseous as a cheap taco. All the bloodletting is like ketchup, yet Rodriquez and co-director Ethan Maniquises filmmaking provides no relish. The dialogue is trite and the action techniques (quick mutilations and bursts of blood) are between cornball and inept.
Robert Rodriguez takes advantage of fanboy trash taste, which may be the only aesthetic tradition celebrated in contemporary film culture. But its still crap taste, and Rodriguezs political pointsarguing in favor of open-borders and illegal immigration dont justify such garbage. Machete never raises ones perceptions or thinking the way Neveldine-Taylor do. The gruesome prologue in which Stevan Seagal kills Machetes wife and child recalls the underrated (yet brilliant) Jonah Hex, yet this ludicrously exaggerated violence isnt meant to be feltjust laughed at with fake erudition. If this kind of selfconscious cinema junk is to be enjoyed, it can only be enjoyed by morons.