Machete (2010) Movie Review, Trailer, Film Still and Poster

USA 2010
Director: Ethan Maniquis, Robert Rodriguez
Cast: Danny Trejo, Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, Steven Seagal, Michelle Rodriguez, Don Johnson
Rating: R
Release Date: 3 September 2010
Running Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

The Movie Review

Machete film still 1


MACHETE
Storyline:
Cast:
Ending:
Overall:

It's about time there's a movie featuring Danny Trejo as the main lead actor and title character. This man's career goes way back than Grindhouse (2007) as most people know him from. I remembered seeing him vaguely from Andy Sidaris movie, Guns (1990), he's got quite memorable figure there. Always giving convincing performances, although quite caught in stereotype role for always appear as the 'bad guy' in any movie, Trejo constantly proofs he's got the knack for acting!

Danny Trejo as Tong in Guns (1990)

Machete Cortez is an ex Mexican Federale who's got his family killed before his eyes by a mean drug cartel leader, Torrez (Steven Seagal). Downtrodden and alone in the world, Machete is simply trying to make money by doing hard labor. But after a fight on the street in which he wins without giving any effort, he's hired by a mysterious man to assassinate a senator (Robert De Niro) who hates the guts out of immigrants which in this case, Mexicans. Machete takes the job for a payment of $150,000, but he's been set up as a scapegoat! But armed with experience and dark past, Machete try to turn the table on his double-crossing employer with the help of a young Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, Sartana Rivera (Jessica Alba).

Machete has got some serious Feel that unfortunately will work effectively only to B-movie action fans but looks cheap and tacky for casual viewers. The poster actually already hints what the movie would look like. If you don't know what a B-movie is or clueless of the term 'Grindhouse', soon enough you'll start scratching your head and wondering whether there's some error in the visual quality. And on the level with you guys, general moviegoers who haven't developed some taste in drive-in or exploitation cinemas will not get the jokes or the excessive violence or the gratuitous nudity.

About the jokes, they're subtle but still made me chuckle. About the action, intense bullet-spraying and pumping from practically almost anyone in the screen. About the violence, oooo they're good and in such exaggerated kind of way that it evokes smile of seeing how silly it is to see heads flying combined with deliberately crappy CGI (maybe as a nod to the 70s). About the nudity, whow plenty, and I don't know if they're using body doubles or not for the nude scenes of lead actresses, but whoever on screen, Lindsay Lohan and Jessica Alba got naked, as well as most of the female cast.

Nevertheless, there's some kind of overly hard effort from the filmmakers to make it feel sleazy, tawdry and cheesy. Sometimes when they try too hard, the film becomes not-genuine and artificial that somehow it almost crosses the border of being a light spoof of 70s B-movies instead of being a real B-movie piece. Desperado (1995) is a good example of serious action coming from the same director and which has been aired on TV for zillions of times. Of course B-movie fans would want to give this movie a spin but I still hope the sequel Machete Kills and Machete Kills Again --which will involve outer space scenes (Whow!)-- would be more sincere in being "bad".