Fanboys became all giddy and a'flutter when they heard that Danny Trejo, the pocked, hatchet-faced perennial bad guy, was finally being given a movie of his own. And not just any movie—"Machete," a Mexpoloitation tribute that came out of a faux trailer Trejo and director Robert Rodriguez cut as part of "Grindhouse." And now it's here. Insanely, over-the-top violent and inhumanely funny. But is it any good?
The short answer is that if you're into movies that are insanely, over-the-top violent and inhumanely funny, then sure. The long answer is that there seems to be a reason that Trejo—who is an arresting actor, no doubt—has always been the strong, silent type. He's a man of few words and many blades in "Machete," taking on a who's who of bad guys from both the A and C lists.
In a nutshell, Trejo's character is a former Federale, whose family was killed by the brutal Mexican drug lord Torres (a nicely smug Steven Seagal). Three years later, he's an illegal day laborer in Texas, when he's recruited by Booth (Jeff Fahey) to assassinate the right-wing anti-immigration politician John McLaughlin (Robert De Niro). Turns out it's all a set-up—Booth works with McLaughlin, who is tied into the violent border vigilante group led by Stillman (Don Johnson), all of whom are conspiring with Torres to build a border fence that's secure, except in certain areas.
But it turns out they've picked the wrong guy. Before long, Machete is working with Luce (Michelle Rodriguez), who runs an underground railroad for illegal immigrants, Sartana (Jessica Alba), an immigration officer with a heart, and Booth's wife (Alicia Marek) and daughter (Lindsay Lohan). And by working with, I mean sleeping with. Essentially, he shoots, stabs, disembowels, hacks, thrashes, and maims anyone who stands in his way, to the point of which the bloodshed becomes commonplace. The violence starts strong, but it doesn't take long to become immune to the extremity of it all.
In the original trailer, Rodriguez and Trejo were able to convey an homage to the grindhouse genre, and it's one that is carried over to the feature with varied results. The movie runs long, and although they probably didn't mean for this to be the case, the populist sentiment carries more weight than the killings, simply because there's too much killing and we're a divided nation when it comes to immigration. At the same time, because it's so relentlessly brutal, and because that brutality is meant to amuse, there's no way to take anything anyone has to say in any way seriously.
Essentially, it's blunt and often flat, much like the weapon the film and the character are named for. It's also far more entertaining than it is good. Which is precisely the idea.
