Saturday, September 18, 2010
Machete
Ruth and I just left Machete. If you've not seen it, I highly recommend it. Despite the copious amounts of violence and nudity, trust me: you will have fun. You might have to lower your suspension of disbelief, but you'll find it was well worth the effort.
My understanding is that Machete was originally a fake trailer for the movie Grindhouse. If that's the case, then Machete is a movie fully fleshed out from the initial concept yet still faithful to its grindhouse origins. What is there to say? Aside from the beautifully ugly Danny Trejo playing the main character, it's a virtual all-star cast.
Lindsay Lohan, in between rehab starts, has a nice role. I was surprised that she went nude, but as Ruth said her career might have regressed to the place where she can only get parts if she drops her drawers. Cheech Marin plays a kick-ass priest, Jessica Alba plays the immigration agent with a heart of gold, Don Johnson is a murderous border vigilante in mirrorshades, Steven Seagal is the doughy bad guy and Robert De Niro is a proto-Tea Party Texan. All of them spend the entire film chewing scenery and if you get tired of the wit and sheer gall of the script, there are lots of explosions and of course, several machete murders which could only have been plausible if the main character had the strength of Bigfoot. (Like I said, please suspend disbelief - this is NOT a documentary on illegal immigration issues.)
The plot - well, is that really necessary. All you need to know is Machete Was Done Wrong - he's done wrong multiple times in fact - and that gets us off to a running start because he is not the kind of guy you want to do wrong. After several improbable escapes from near certain death, we find out that Machete has a lot of friends in the immigrant community. He'll need all of those friends to get his sweet, sweet glorious revenge and I don't think I'm giving much away to say that he gets it.
Actually, for all of the over-the-top humor I was surprised at how political this film was. Seagal's drug lord is in cahoots with corrupt politican De Niro - if drug lords contribute money to politicians to keep the product illegal in the United States and the prices high, they would also contribute to those same politicians to tighten the faucet on illegal immigration so that the price can be made a little bit higher all around. The conceit is that not only can America not do without illegal immigration - as one bad guy says, illegal immigration keeps the price of labor down and is the best thing to happen to Texas business. Furthermore, we've given immigrants high amounts of access to our society, and as was proven in the wave of Eastern European immigration at the beginning of the 20th century these illegals understand us better than you think they might. They might not speak the language, but they ain't stupid.
A lot of immigrants get treated badly in this film, and Machete is sort of the stand-in for all of them. The movie is not true Mexploitation, but if you go up his family tree on the American side I'm sure you'll find guys named Shaft and Sweetback. Machete is their close kin, at least in spirit. Machete is bad ass and despite his looks, he's got something (zzzzziipppp!) for the ladies, too. The audience during the showing we saw tonight had a lot of Hispanics in the audience, and I suspect they had a really good time. I suspect that if Sarah Palin saw this film, her head asplode.
The end promises us two sequels, Machete Kills and Machete Kills Again in true grindhouse fashion. If they're as half as good as Machete I'm there, dude.
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1 comment:
I've read that Lohan's supposed nudity was actually a body double, so she might not have gone all the way (though I've no doubt that she will end up doing so eventually).
If you liked Machete, you should really check out the other Grindhouse fake trailers. They were all fantastic, and they really contributed to the experience when seen with the films in the theater.
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