by The Great White Gypsy

I wish more directors were like Robert Rodriguez.

Not because he’s a particularly amazing director (although I’m a huge fan), but because the man knows how to have fun. He made his debut with El Mariachi, a typical, super-violent Mexican action film. Since then he’s done vampires, horror, family fun, comic books, and Grindhouse homages. His latest, Machete, is his first jaunt back across the border in almost 18 years.

If you’ve seen any of his work, you know what to expect for a Rodriguez flick, and Machete is no different. The title character (played by everyone’s favorite tattooed Mexican, Danny Trejo) is on the trail of a kidnapped girl in Mexico when he is double crossed by an old partner (the fattest and best Steven Seagal we’ve seen yet), his wife is killed, and he is left in a burning house. Miraculously, he survives and crosses the border to become a migrant worker. When he is hired by a mysterious businessman (Jeff Fahey) to kill an immigrant-hating senator (Robert De Niro), he is once again set up and must evade capture long enough to exact his revenge with the help of a secretive revolutionary (Michelle Rodriguez), a conflicted INS agent (Jessica Alba), and his shotgun-totting, pot-smoking priest brother (Cheech Marin).

This movie is fucking ridiculous. Sorry, but it is. Words just can’t do justice to the outlandish, absurd, hilarious, violent, explicit shit you are going to witness for an hour and a half. Even if you close your eyes and keep repeating, “it’s only a parody of Mexican cinema”, it will not help.

For anyone who still doesn’t know, this film is based on a mock theatrical preview that was shown amongst other mock previews in between Planet Terror and Death Proof for Rodriguez’ and Tarantino’s Grindhouse homage. It managed to showcase a shit ton of big name actors and two minutes of ridiculous sex and violence. The only difference between the preview and the film? The film is longer.

Motorcycles are airborne for no reason, heads are lopped off, machetes cut through everthing, and for some inconceivable reason, three hot actresses want to bone Danny Trejo (I will never look at Jessica, Michelle, or Lindsay the same again. Unclean…). If this weren’t enough, a blatant, overplayed message about US immigration policy is pervasive to the point of insulting. But for all of these dumb assholes who went to a Robert Rodriguez film about a guy named Machete who repels down buildings on some guy’s large intestine (that’s not a fucking joke) and then got mad about its, uh, message…I have but one word: Tacos.
Everyone in this freaking movie is eating tacos. White people are depicted as evil, brutal isolationists who want to build an electrified fence along the border. Mexicans are depicted as walking stereotypes wearing cowboy boots, calling each other “homes”, and driving a convoy of hydraulic-bouncing lowriders to the explosive finale. But everyone is eating tacos from a fucking taco truck!!!. I swear I even saw Little Tortilla Boy run in blasting. And you can’t take any kind of political message away from a film that features Jessica Alba jumping on the hood of what was probably a Monte Carlo and yelling, “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us!”.

If you want to feel better about yourself by empathizing with the plight of illegal aliens, go watch Under the Same Moon and don’t talk to me about it. If you want to spend a couple hours laughing your ass off at retarded violence and getting dumber by the minute watching an immensely talented director pay tribute to Mexican cinema by pitting beaner dishwashers with shotguns against inbred crackers with hunting rifles, then go check out Machete. You won’t be disappointed. Perplexed. Offended. Shocked. But not disappointed.

FINAL GRADE: B

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