|
 From
the moment the first severed limbs go flying and the first decapitated
head bounces across the floor sped on its way by pumping jets of blood,
one knows exactly what one is in for with Machete. Directors Robert
Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis have just introduced a new cinematic genre;
Tex-Mexploitation has just joined the lexicon ushered in with thumping
hydraulic low-riders, pugnacious homeboys, steamy Latina sexpots, and
one haggard man who knows his way around a blade.
Years
ago, someplace south of the border, a one-man army fell afoul of a drug
lord and found himself tortured and forced to watch the kingpin sharpen
a samurai sword on the neck of his wife. Left for dead, the thwarted
hero somehow survived the ordeal and has spent the next few decades
burying the past, trying to get along as one of the thousands of
faceless, nameless Mexican immigrants in America. He joins the ranks of
day labourers standing on the corner desperate for honest work. The
rumblings about an underground movement helping new arrivals headed by a
mysterious female called Shé means little to our fallen superman. A
sleazy businessman hires the old warrior assuming that he can be easily
manipulated into becoming a fall guy for a complicated scheme involving
the assassination of an anti-immigration senator. However, the dirty
politico never counted on the fact that the patsy he got for cheap was
the blood-splattered myth known as Machete.
Machete is a salsa-covered middle finger to the forces in the US that
have chosen to wage war against an entire race of people while hiding
their insidious intentions behind the altruism of keeping America’s
borders safe. Mexican pride is rampant in this blatant response to
heavy-handed legislation like Arizona’s so-called “Papers, please” law,
which proposed to make it legal for police to stop and question the
status of anyone who somehow looked like they might be in the country
without documents. Rodriguez and Maniquis proudly play up to every
deep-seated racist phobia the Minutemen and other self-appointed
guardians of the nation have about Latinos. As his name might hint,
Machete is a very dangerous man with a knife, yet while he prefers
blades over bullets, one would do well to fear the machine gun welded
onto the handlebars of his motorcycle. Machete is going to take your
women, too; apparently looking like ten miles of beaten road and
thoroughly worn around the edges has nothing on Machete’s innate appeal
to every X-chromosome he comes in contact with. His lusty harem
includes the government agent trying to capture the leader of an
immigrant smuggling ring, as well as the leader of the immigrant
smuggling ring (- isn’t that a conflict of interest?), and both
the sleazy businessman’s wife and daughter. I’m sure I’ve missed a few,
but this is all merely a part of the legend of the great Machete
whispered about by homeboys and cowboys on both sides of the border.
Unwilling as he is to return to his bloody fame, Machete is no one’s
fool and when he’s dragged into the anti-Mexican plot to gain sympathy
for the Latino-hating senator, the resourceful hero grabs anything
handy, knives, scalpels, intestines to bring the fight to The Man.
Gleefully flying in the face of political correctness and unabashed in
its Pro-Latino stance, Machete doesn’t duck comparisons to the
Blaxploitation films of the 1970’s, with their cool and deadly
all-powerful heroes who prevailed through impossible odds. It also
shares the sense of racial pride and identity that made those movies a
rallying point for their audiences. One of the marked differences
between them is the Blaxploitation films were incubated during a strong
upsurge in African–American self-esteem; the era of the Black Panthers
and “Black is Beautiful.” Machete arrives in an opposite climate; with
Latinos being made scapegoats for the ills of America’s failing economy,
which makes the release of this film and its joyful subversiveness so
much richer. Machete celebrates its Tex-Mexicaness with a gorgeous
parade of flashy customised motorcycles and blinding, bouncing
low-riders. During the film’s big showdown between the downtrodden
immigrants and the redneck militia men, Latino construction workers,
dishwashers, doctors, farmers, nurses, homeboys and cholas all join the
battle.
It is
also worth mentioning that Machete is simply an outrageously fun time at
the movies, with Rodriguez and Maniquis pulling out all the gunfire,
gore, explosions and two-fisted action they can lay their hands on.
Holding true to the faux-trailer that preceded Rodriguez’s and Quentin
Tarantino’s 2007 Grindhouse double feature and even using footage from
that fake preview, Machete is shot and structured as a 1970’s AIP
B-movie, where there is no limit to what feats of derring-do our
protagonist can achieve or how incongruous (- or campy) the
levels of acting might be. As Machete, Danny Trejo, the craggy-voiced
character actor who’s done more than his time as memorable support in
nearly two hundred film and television projects, finally gets to shine
in a role he was born to play. Besides all of Machete’s rollicking
action, the comedy – intentional and otherwise - is hilarious: The
stone-faced Trejo delivers what I’m sure will be one of the film’s most
quoted lines after being faced with twenty-first century technology;
“Machete don’t text.” Along for the trip in the low-rider is Michelle
Rodriguez as the kindly but tough taco truck owner who feels responsible
for the waves of new immigrants that crowd her lunch wagon every day.
Jeff Fahey is the man with a mission to implicate Mexicans for his own
financial benefit even if that means the death of his state senator.
Cheech Marin plays a not-entirely abstinent Catholic priest with a
special connection to Machete. After those four, here’s where things in
the casting department get weird: Miami Vice’s Crockett, Don Johnson is
“introduced” as a gravel-voiced Minuteman who enjoys patrolling the
US-Mexico border for hapless refugees a little too much. We also have
Jessica Alba of the questionable Spanish accent as the INS agent who
takes an interest in our itinerant superman. And in the bizarre box, we
have Steven Segal under a roadkill toupee and heavy bronzer as Torrez,
the ruthless drug kingpin who murdered Machete’s family. Lindsey Lohan
has a small but strange role as the businessman’s trampy daughter, who
follows a divine calling to help the downtrodden. As the
immigrant-hating senator, Robert De Niro’s southwestern accent slips
into something decidedly more northeastern the minute the cameras stop
rolling. In one of the most hilarious moments of the film and possibly
of De Niro’s career, the corrupt politician, on the run for his life
from both the Mexicans and the Minutemen and in need of transportation,
carjacks a yellow taxi.
Machete is audacious, outrageous and a lot of fun. A serio-comic action
hero flick for these troubled days; Rodriguez and Maniquis find the
perfect mixture of politics and good times. If Machete’s two sequels
announced at the end credits really do come to pass and are as much of a
blast as this film, I’ll be waiting with mariachi hat on my head and
tequila shot in hand. Viva Machete!
~ The
Lady Miz Diva
September 3rd, 2010
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