Robert Rodriguez’s over-the-top Mexploitation flick, Machete, is sure to outrage all parties with its take on immigration law.
Machete
Danny Trejo, Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, Lindsay Lohan, Cheech Marin, Michelle Rodriguez, Don Johnson, Steven Seagal
They just fucked with the wrong Mexican!” growls the narrator in “Machete,” the action-packed fake trailer leading off the 2007 Quentin Tarantino–Robert Rodriguez flick, Grindhouse—and can we please now admit that this two-minute segment was the best thing in the whole movie?
Robert Rodriguez is no idiot. He heard the cheers for that “trailer,” and now he’s made it into a full-length feature starring ultimate badass Trejo. We have no doubt it will exceed the laugh-out-loud lunacy of that 2007 segment. (An updated trailer, released near the time of the Arizona immigration-law flare-up, nearly broke the internet.) The inspiration here is the subgenre of crummy low-budget exploitation pictures that used to keep Chuck Norris in headbands. Trejo’s strapping former Federale, desperate for cash, is framed for a botched political assassination and goes on a violent rampage. The film may be an homage to trashy B movies of yore, but the cast is A-list all the way, including De Niro as the backstabbing senatorial bad guy and a bevy of beauties sure to grab audience attention should it wander: Alba, Rose McGowan, Rodriguez, and—most enjoyably—Lohan in a nun’s habit. Perfect.
