Heave Media

“They fucked with the wrong Mexican.” In 2007, when Grindhouse was released and Robert Rodriguez’s mock trailer for a film called Machete kicked off the proceedings, those words tickled a very specific part of the moviegoing audience, a part that missed the days when political correctness didn’t have to be a part of the cinematic experience and the heroes were tough guys of a totally different variety. Due to the overwhelming fan response to that trailer, Rodriguez repackaged Machete as a full-length feature and assembled a patchwork cast of gorgeous women (Jessica Alba, Michelle Rodriguez), cult heroes (Danny Trejo in the title role, Tom Savini) and even Robert DeNiro as a corrupt Texas politico.

It’s almost heartwarming to see Trejo as the star of a major studio release, because the journeyman actor (Heat, every movie Rodriguez has ever directed) has been long due. He’s a charismatic presence as Machete, a throwback to the monosyllabic killing machines of yore. Because this is a Robert Rodriguez movie, though, there’s a constant wink to the majority of his dialogue, like this exchange with Sartana (Alba), the ICE agent with whom Machete finds himself allied:

Sartana: “You mean you don’t know how to use a cell phone?”

Machete: “Machete don’t text. Machete gets evidence.”

The film is peppered with homage touches to exploitation cinema, which is both a blessing and a curse in this case. The overly dramatic musical cues are amusing, but it’s a joke that’s been done to death, and in the case of fare like last year’s brilliant Black Dynamite, been done better. Cheech Marin shows up as a shotgun-toting priest, and while his early scenes are thoroughly entertaining, there’s a sequence involving him and Jeff Fahey’s smooth-talking villain that pushes some major boundaries of taste, even by the standards of exploitation sleaze. An even bigger button-pusher is Lindsay Lohan’s turn as an internet “model” who ends up on drugs and as Machete’s thrall before finding a higher calling; I don’t know whether to be impressed that she’d take on such a self-aware role or bothered that Rodriguez even let her do it.

Lest you think that Machete only crosses the line for shock (/schlock?) value, however, there’s considerably more that hits the mark than doesn’t. Steven Seagal tries on a Speedy Gonzales accent as the drug kingpin at the film’s core, Rodriguez gives one of her more endearing performances as a revolutionary-turned-taco cart owner and the film’s sequence of events unfold at a wonderfully campy clip. Trejo proves himself a forceful leading man, and there are in fact a select few moments when he gets to show off his chops, most notably an impeccable sense of comedic timing. Mention also needs to be made of DeNiro’s work, one of the more entertaining performances he’s delivered in a while; this might be considered him slumming it, but if you’ve seen any of his output in the past five years (Stardust notwithstanding), he might’ve needed Machete more than the other way around.

You may have noticed by now that I’ve avoided discussion of plot. That’s because while there is one, or at least a skeleton on which fight scenes are built, it’s really irrelevant. There’s a lot about a privately owned fence between Texas and Mexico (Don Johnson shows up to do a hilarious Chris Simcox impression) and the oppression of immigrants, but this is really only the setup for a weedwacker built out of lawnmower blades and its use as a weapon. By the time the climactic fight between the day laborers and the racist border patrollers goes down, there’ve already been more decapitations and creative abuses of the human body than you’ll see in the sum of American horror cinema this year. And then the nun with the machine gun shows up.

3/4 stars