Machete Review

Danny Trejo is one of those actors that everyone knows. Maybe the name doesn’t ring a bell, but one look at the grizzled, scarred, tanned leather alien terrain that is his face will have even my grandparents saying, “Oh, THAT guy.”

Trejo manages to be one of those amazing character actors. He isn’t the person who ever appears in the spot light or is contending for any Oscars come February, but he does fulfill a certain niche that is desperately needed every now and then that the audience is familiar with. Character actors like Trejo are the ones that add some much needed relief or depth to a screenplay that uses generic stock heroes and villains to fill in all the gaps.

Needless to say, I love Trejo, and when the “Grindhouse” double feature was released nearly three years ago and featured a fake trailer for a movie that involved Danny as a machete wielding freedom fighter with enough copious amounts of violence and nudity to cause any teenage boy to go into a never waking fantasy of pure awesomeness, I nearly lost my cool. Like many of the other geek enthusiasts who saw “Grindhouse”, there was a part of me that wanted to see Rodriguez’s teaser come to life. I wanted to see Trejo on the big screen in the starring role of his very own cinematic action blockbuster. I waited patiently along with all the other exploitation starved movie nerds until at long last I got what I had been waiting for – or did I?

Sadly, “Machete” just isn’t all that good. Is it entertaining? Yes. Is the action great? Of course! Is there nudity and gore and just about everything else that makes these guilty pleasure films destined cult classics? Hell yeah! So with all the pieces in play and arranged in just the right fashion one has to begin to wonder, what happened? Well, the answer is surprisingly simple. The titular character of Machete gets dragged down by a cavalcade of off the wall side characters and an unusually stupid and forced political message.

Now call me crazy but when I go in to see a movie featuring Danny Trejo as an ex Mexican Federales who was betrayed and wishes to get revenge against his saboteurs in the most gruesome ways possible, the last thing I am looking for is a political message about border control. I know some people will argue that the message was fine and that I just need to be a little more accepting of such a serious hot topic issue; but the message is in no way transparent and has a tendency to dominate the center of the screen waving its arms around like a little kid starved for attention. In the end I couldn’t help but throw up my arms in defeat and roll my eyes into the back of my head from disbelief that my mindless action schlock was being soiled with an amalgam of conflicting CNN, Fox News, and Hollywood liberal rhetoric.

Honestly, I want to love this movie. I want to say that this is the performance we have been waiting for from Trejo, but I can’t. Is it so much to ask that a movie called “Machete” be nothing more than 2 hours of watching Trejo run around killing people in elaborate ways, guided by a paper-thin plot that serves only to drag the character from one set piece to the next? Ok, I’ll admit that seeing DeNiro, Segal, Don Johnson, and Cheech ham it up is great fun and the neatly packaged gift of a naked Lindsey Lohan, a partially nude Jessica Alba, and Michele Rodriguez in the sexiest badass tough chick outfit to ever appear on screen (which I highly encourage all of you young women to dress up as for Halloween this year) is a pure delight, but this all comes at the expense of leaving Machete on the backburner. By the time we get to the finale the movie is such a catastrophe of divergent half baked political stories and character arches that I almost forgot Machete was the star player. To complicate matters the scene that should have been the high point when Trejo faces off against Segal is disappointing and extremely anti-climatic.

Robert Rodriguez is a man who has always put style over substance and I love him for it. His imagination is permanently set to overdrive when it comes to his films and it’s a pleasure to see his granulated visions form themselves in stupid explosions and slick signature battle sequences. However, his downfall as a director is that he may in fact be a little too in love with the characters he creates. They are each memorable and fun, but they have a tendency to step on each others’ toes as they crowd the frame. Sometimes it works well like in “From Dusk Till Dawn” or “Planet Terror” and other times it stumbles around until it breaks its toe against a solid steel door like “Once Upon a Time in Mexico”. Even when it does work, there is a noticeable struggle taking place between the cast and this error still ends up being that single annoying thread dangling off an otherwise beautiful dress.

Sorry Danny, but this movie was just average. There was a lot of fun to be had, but there was a lot of room for improvement. Hopefully the prospects of a sequel as teased at the ending credits is realized, because despite all the complaints I had against this movie I still loved Trejo’s portrayal of Machete and would love to see this character again– so long as we can get focused on the action and steer clear from all those other nasty pitfalls.