Machete
Danny Trejo, Robert De Niro
Director Robert Rodriguez
Review Ray Chan
IN his collaboration with Quentin Tarantino on the two-in-one thriller Grindhouse, Robert Rodriguez introduced a mock trailer for a fake movie called Machete, starring craggy-faced, veteran character actor Danny Trejo as an intimidating Mexican day labourer.
Now, in tribute to violent, low-budget 70s exploitation pictures, that ‘coming attraction’ has become a testosterone-fuelled reality.
The minimalist plot behind this action film – with so many over-the-top sequences that it could really be labelled a comedy – revolves around main (and maim) man Machete (Trejo), a badass ex-Mexican Federale who is seeking revenge against the vicious drug lord who killed his wife and daughter.
Within the opening minutes, he’s chopped the heads and arms off a dozen gangsters guarding the kingpin Torrez (Steven Seagal), but comes off worse for wear.
Left for dead, Machete recuperates and flees over-the-border to Texas, where he’s coerced under threat of deportation to accept a job to kill conservative, intolerant Texas Senator McLaughlin (Robert De Niro), who denounces illegal immigrants as parasites, and enjoys driving with sadistic, rifle-wielding Von (Don Johnson), shooting unarmed Mexicans they find sneaking into the country.
But it’s a set-up and when he’s identified as the would-be perpetrator of the failed assassination, Machete’s only allies are his brother and less-than-pious priest Padre Benito (Cheech Marin), and Luz (Michelle Rodriguez), the proprietor of a taco truck and leader of the underground resistance called ‘the Network’.
Then there’s scantily clad Sartana (Jessica Alba), a luscious Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, and slutty April (Lindsay Lohan), the entitled, drugged-up daughter of McLaughlin’s associate Booth. Mix them all together and you get a cocktail of murder and mayhem.
Rodriguez and his co-director Ethan Maniquis may be only junior-grade Tarantinos, but they assemble enough ludicrous, offensive, politically incorrect genre conventions – like bigoted hombres, naughty nurses, double-entendred dialogue and slightly-clad bodacious babes – to score the film as one of this year’s most surprising must-sees.
And they’re already planning two sequels – this time, the trailers are real. Sí, por favour.
