Machete
Machete
For all intents and purposes, Machete shouldn’t exist. It was first conceived as a phony trailer alongside inventions like Hobo with a Shotgun and Werewolf Women of the SS to segue Planet Terror into Death Proof in 2007′s Grindhouse, a throwback to trashy exploitative B movies from the 60s and 70s. Three years later and with US immigration tensions offering a a real world cognate, Machete is born as a feature length, ironic, tongue and cheek critique of the trials of Mexican day labourers and the policies that abuse them.
What I disliked
- The Supporting Cast. Robert Rodriguez doesn’t handle auxiliary players terribly well, which is evident by the large, sloppily handled cast. Characters like Lindsay Lohan’s addict aspiring porn star, Cheech Marin’s double shotgun wielding padre, and Steven Segal’s samurai Mexican drug lord, aren’t explored beyond their bland novelties. They just pop in and out of situations at an irrational discretion, with Lindsay Lohan in particular serving no purpose beyond spending the majority of her screen time naked (if the year was 2004 and I was talking about Mean Girls, believe me, I wouldn’t mind).
- Open Air Action Sequences. By this, I mean scenarios in wide spaces with dozens of characters filling each other with bullets and chopping each other to pieces. A grind house flick works best when there’s a sort of intimacy between the murders, an up close “in your face (with a machete)” attitude. Machete featured this extensively during its opening chapters by having the camera no more than a few feet away from decapitations and amputations in narrow rooms and corridors. It made the ludicrous violence and gore that much more visceral. In contrast, the final climax between furious Mexican day-labourers and racist border patrol vigilantes, the massive confrontation towards which Machete is building, consists of an all out brawl bursting with knife fights and shoot outs, but no real focus or gratification. In fact, I would wager that more blood is shown in the first five minutes than in the last twenty. It’s not quite the blood soaked finale one would reasonably expect after spending the first eighty minutes picking up severed limbs and fragments of skull.
- The Narrative. Think of Machete as Shoot ‘Em Up, with blades filling in for bullets. It’s a chaotic and gruesome bit of escapism that all too often lets a convoluted story grind everything to a halt. The narrative of the former is just as preposterous and unsatisfying as that of the latter, but slightly easier to tolerate since it’s trying to make a point: Americans in the southern states don’t treat Mexicans very nicely. I’m not averse to films that carry messages, but the best way for a movie to go about a lecture is to present its subject in a “take it or leave it” fashion. Machete demands more often than it suggests, which makes its strains on the pacing more difficult to overlook. Machete is by no means long, but it feels longer than it should because the message often gets in the way of the movie.
- The Conclusion. So much time and effort was spent staging a war between Mexican immigrants hungry for revolution and misguided racist patriots that for Machete to end with no sense of resolution whatsoever creates a pretty vacuous film. For all the bullets, blades, blood, and guts, there isn’t even the slightest hint that anything was earned or lost for either side by the end of it all. The ending seemed to indicate that the revolution will go back to landscaping and dish washing while the vigilantes will go back to unlawful border guarding, which makes me wonder just what the point of all the conspiring, duplicity, and murder, that came before it was all about.
- Jessica Alba. Honestly, I find it adorable how she tries to act and thinks that she contributes anything to her projects beyond a pretty face.
What I liked
- Close Quarters Action Sequences. See above, but to reiterate: the closer the camera is to dismemberment, the stronger such scenes are. It’s easier to appreciate creative killing sprees one at a time instead of en masse. Machete seem to have forgotten this fact the further along it goes.
- The Beginning. Despite the ill conceived lunacy that will follow, the first sections of the film, from minute one in Mexico to the soon to be infamous intestine repelling scene, truly give the sense that Machete will deliver all the grind house goods it promises. Had I known where the film would end up taking itself, I probably would’ve walked out then and there while the note was still high. The unfortunate truth is that Machete simply doesn’t get better as it goes along.
It’s disappointing, really, how the gleeful anarchy of a fantastic exploitation throwback is bogged down by the weight of contemporary political criticism. Ethics in film work best as a “take it or leave it” component, not when they’re hogging the spotlight. Machete has a lot to say about US immigration policies, but when a lecture threatens to get in the way of bloody carnage and idealism restrains the rampage, I feel like it starts to miss the point of its own existence.
Is it a legitimate claim to say that an exploitation flick is artless? Probably only as far as one can possibly complain about its trashy nature. I wanted to like Machete, and indeed I do like it, if only for the primal, instinctive appeal of ultra-violence and tits. The problem is that Machete confuses itself, both deliberately with an agenda and accidentally through its presentation. As it stands, Machete is only worth a look because it’ll be a miracle if ever an exploitation flick with Hollywood polish should hit theatres again.
(I also saw The American yesterday, and let me just say that I definitely recommend watching that over Machete, believe it or not. For whatever reason, I’m feeling more gracious towards the slow burn yet wholly generic Euro-style thriller as opposed to the bloody trash that’s normally right up my alley. Who would’ve thought?)
Well I was honestly not expecting this movie to actually have a point to it, beyond the gratuitous violence and sex. Honestly, I generally like it when action movies have a brain (see: Inception) but I don’t know how I feel about this one. This seemed to me to be ostensibly a no-brain movie, and if the point the movie is trying to make actually ends up restraining the fun violence and gore, well then the two points seem to be working opposed to each other. Still, I heard good things all around and I love Rodriguez’s work in general.