Machete (2010) - Revisited! Action

Machete (2010) - REVISITED! My original thoughts on Machete were blogged after seeing this film in the theater, and are pretty basic, I didn't want to give too much plot away. Now though I think it is time to revisit this film. Stop complaining you have had two years to see this film so while I am spoiling it, just sit there and shut up. If you want to stop reading right here and go see it that would save you knowing all the details. This film is a wild adventure of a man pushed from his life, who has lost everything he loved. He sees an injustice he can fixed, though doing it by agreeing to assassinate someone is a real jump out of being righteous. When his attempt is revealed to be a setup, he must run and survive until he can bring closure to the situation and his past pain. It is a revenge film that is over the top in violence, the bad characters are evil and ugly making Machete's action seem justified. With a strong political message it turned off many right leaning folks but hey, can't please everyone.
  The first thing that had to be done in this film is to establish the main character as one bad assed mother fucker and create the central struggle of the revenge part of the film. Machete (Danny Trejo) is a Mexican Federale and a damn good one. He and his partner drive towards the hideout of some kidnappers and discuss the wisdom of attempting a rescue.  The girl in the house was to be a witness in a case against Mob leader Rogelio Torrez (Steven Segal) and Machete's partner would prefer they did not go in. In fact a call from Machete's Chief (Alejandro Antonio) can not stop him. As he barrels into gunfire and then directly into the side of the building.  No less than three machine guns are blasting away in this first action and remarkably Machete is unscathed while his partner is riddled with bullets. This establishes the fantasy of the film, it is not a realistic walk through the life of a Federale but a hyper-violent hero story where if you are close to the main character your chances of survival are much less than his. At this point you can stop saying, "Oh that would not happen that way! Impossible!" No it is now establish that this is a fantasy story and all your notions of what could happen in reality should be put away
  Machete leaves the vehicle unharmed and begins his walk through the hideout looking for the girl and easily killing any gangster he comes in contact with. Humor is established by having Machete hack the hand of a gun toting thug and then using the gun hand still attached on the next gangster to enter the room. He then looks at the gun and his blade and tosses the gun away as the least effect weapon choice. He is the skilled warrior and like in so many samurai films of the seventies all who come against him perish quickly. The scene where men enter from three separate doorways to surround him only to have a spinning Machete behead them all takes his prowess to a new level.
  Furthering the fantasy elements of the film happens with the finding of the girl, Chica (Mayra Leal). She is sprawled nude on a bed, light dimming the room through the red curtains. Seventies porn music starts in what can only be seen as comical as the sultry vixen attempts to seduce her rescuer. Not only is he to be seen as a bad ass but as a figure of sexual desire. The contradiction between the hard rough looks of Trejo and the response of the beautiful naked girl creates an almost comical juxtaposition. She can't be on the level can she? When he picks her up and throws her over his shoulder his manhood is established completely. So when she double crosses him and stabs him with his own machete in the leg it turns back to the expected reaction to the man. Then, why this scene exists I can not explain, but the Chica pulls a phone from the only place a nude woman would hide it, and calls in Torrez. The sound effect for this was more than a little squirm inducing.
  All of the opening has been an elaborate setup by Torrez with the help of Machete's boss, the chief because Machete will not be bought out.  As he lays on the floor wincing from his leg wound Torrez and the Chief enter to confront the only straight cop left on the force. Offered one last chance Machete balks, and then the reason for revenge. Torrez brings out Machete's wife and beheads her, and then with all the menace that Segal with his horrible acting ability can muster asks Machete something to the effect of  'Is your little daughter at school? I don't think so."  Then he orders the place burned down with Machete in it. Segal probably the weakest link in this film is the baddest of bad guys. A drug dealing murderer who has no tolerance for not getting his way. Unfortunately or fortunately his character is barely developed into anything resembling real menace. He mostly is the  guy on the other end of the call as he works through his partners on the US side of the border and really in the end when he faces off with Machete it is a bit disappointing. Still though Machete seems doomed and has lost his family to this monster so lets reconvene three years later in Texas.
  Machete is working as a day laborer, hanging by the taco truck waiting for a pickup from a local business to come by and choose him for a day's work. How he survived is never explained but considering what an amazing bad ass he is, you could imagine a path of corpses in his wake. The film starts to establish some of the politics of the story. Luz (Michelle Rodriguez) not only sells food from her taco truck but is secretly head of a secret organization called the Network. A loose connection of illegal and legal immigrants who help immigrants cross the border, settle them and get them papers so they can work. Basically trying to do the service that the immigration service does for immigrants who are not from the south and Spanish speaking. She sees the world as exploitative of the illegals who gather for work, on one hand the Americans complain about the illegals but on the other they have no problem exploiting them for cheap labor. In fact many border businesses rely on the low cost of illegal immigration to maximize profit. In the reality of this movie the immigrant is both disdained and desired. Luz is particularly worried about militant terrorist groups that have sprung up to self patrol the border to stop illegal immigration. They are violent and not being controlled by the government. What are they spending their time doing? Well apparently trying to uncover the Network. We join immigration agent Sartana (Jessica Alba) in her car as she watches and makes notes about Luz and her suspicions about the Network. She is the contrast to Luz, a Latina trying to stop illegal immigration of her own people. Alba was not the best fit for the role either, too damn beautiful for my male mind to buy as a tough cop, she does not pull off hard ass well enough to make the role a winner.
  We then get to see the bad guys with a scene on the border following a group of illegals. The scene opens at night on the border. A group of illegals are making their way into the country when they are surprised by the lights of a vehicle. They are stopped by a border vigilante group lead by Von (Don Johnson) and including Senator John McLaughlin (Robert De Niro). Wounding a child and having his pregnant Mother in his sights Von gives his speech about his motives, "I know anybody born here is a citizen just like you and me. I know people will call us vigilantes when its just about vigilance. Somebody has got to keep watch on this great nation of ours, otherwise Texas will become Mexico again..." He then shoots dead the pregnant woman. The response to this comes from State Senator who agrees and kills the kid. The way over the top portrayal is further evidence that the film is intended as a hyper violent fantasy. The vigilantes are the lowest of beings, arrogant in the accident of birth into this country, lacking morals, decency and being the perfect villains for Machete.
  To further the audiences understanding of how bad the State Senator is we see one of his campaign ad. In it he refers to illegal immigrants as parasite, who are sickening the country, leaching off our system and killing the country from the inside. He calls for an electric fence covering the entire border and no amnesty. Considering that, in real life, there are active border patrols by citizens who believe their policy for the border should supersede the government. That they are actively trying to get a wall and no amnesty for illegals, you can understand that having their ideas co opted by these particularly murderous bad guys can be upsetting to them.  They do not see themselves as the same as these characters and probably did not get that this is a fiction where the bad guys are exaggerations in order to build empathy for the main character and his cause.
  There are two main plots that develop in the film. The first is a man on the run story featuring Machete and the second is a subplot where the Network and the vigilantes are moving towards a war. Machete is recruited by McLaughlin's assistant Michael Booth (Jeff Fahey) to kill the Senator, or at least that is what he tells Machete. In reality he wants to set him up as the fall guy in a plot that includes wounding McLaughlin so he can get sympathy and also so he can establish that the illegals are dangerous. All this to further his anti immigrant agenda, but Booth had no idea who he was hiring and it is only through his conversations with Torrez that he realizes he picked a dangerous man. When Machete escapes the setup he is on the run, a wanted man but one who can fight back.

  This first plot follows a easy to follow path, Machete has close calls but through violence and help from the Network and later Sartana and Luz he escapes those hunting for his again and again. All the while figuring out what is going on and how he can counter it to clear his name. The bad guys have a story arc where they start to find out who they are dealing with and then start to turn on each other as the chances of there scheme gets closer to becoming public. We see that Booth and McLaughlin are in with Torrez and that this will bring the mob leader into the states to face off with our hero.
  There are some memorable scenes between the start of the chase and the final battle between the Network and Von's group. Machete wounded is brought to a Network hospital, as Booth's henchmen close in we here the doctors verbose explanation about the length of the human intestine, only to have the main character use one as a rope as he dives from a window to avoid death. Hilarious!

• There is also a corkscrew kill that is something else. 
• A reference to "Cheech and Chong" when Machete visits his brother a priest (Cheech Marin) and makes reference to cigars, as Cubans and then Mexican where he shows large joints like in his old comedy bits.
• In the final battle the  hopping suspension on the low rider that hops up and comes down on a vigilante's head. Wow!
• Lindsay Lohan in a nun outfit delivering a kill line.
• The twins from Grindhouse as nurses in the network arriving at the final battle with uzis.
• Torrez's silly unnecessary death speech.

  Even less believable is that both Luz and Sartana at times are attracted to Machete, Luz after saving him from Booth's men and then later Sartana shows interest also. I guess we are supposed to suspend disbelief in the movie since Machete is such a bad ass but damn he is not an attractive man. I don't care how much machismo you have there has got to be a believability line here somewhere.

  To push the envelope even further Machete gets to Booth's house and finds his wife June (Alicia Rachel Marek) and daughter April (Lindsay Lohan) skinny dipping in the pool. When the seventies porn music queues we see Machete join them in the pool and while filming the whole thing to leave as a message for Booth again he is the masculine lover. At the same time he finds all the video evidence he needs to take down McLaughlin and Booth. Included in this is the video tape of the Senator shooting the immigrant.
  In the end the first plot merges into the secondary story of Luz getting ready to do battle with Von and his vigilantes. Never well defined the Von threat is really not that great but it allows the writers to make statements about immigration policy through the characters. Alba gets to come around to seeing it through the eyes of Luz and actually has the wonderfully ridiculous line "We didn't cross the border, the border crossed us." ridiculous in delivery not in sentiment.
  Machete who ends up with the Network brings them to Von's hideout in a low rider parade that is absolutely outrageous. Stereotype and parody it is a sight to behold. See when people are getting upset about the film you have to know this is a fantasy through and through. It is a wild ride that takes things to the extreme and really all you can say to them is fucking lighten up. In the end the Good guys win, Luz and the Network defeat the evil vigilantes, Machete gets his revenge on Torrez, Sartana comes to see the light and becomes part of the network, Booth and McLaughlin meet their ends as it seems they deserve. Mc Laughlin in particular gets an ironic end that has to be seen.
  Machete Kill the sequel is do out next year and I am sure will go even further. The cast including Charlie Sheen Amber Heard, Mel Gibson, Venessa Hudgens, Sofia Vergara, Edward James Olmos, Cuba Gooding Jr, and Lady Gaga looks to be pushing the envelope even further. So I can't wait for that. Now for rating the film.... I really liked the movie and enjoyed it through and through. Still on a second viewing some of the acting was not as good as I remembered although Jeff Fahey was just great. So I think my grade comes down a bit to a more reasonable number for this hyper violent fantasy romp.
Rating (7.6) 5.0 and up are recommended, some films just more recommended than others.

The Curse of El Charro (2005) Horror Ghost Curse

The Curse of El Charro (2005) - I watched this film a few weeks ago and was so unimpressed that I was going to skip reviewing it at all. Sometimes though you just couldn't get a film out of your mind. It is not that it is a particularly memorable film. It is that one aspect of the film was so terrible that I kept thinking I had to write about it. First though a bit of story about it.
Now the producer/writer Ryan R. Johnson and director Rich Ragsdale describe what they were going for in the bonus, making of video. A horror movie for the Latino audience that was tired of the gangster shoot em ups that have been so prevalent. So they came up with the idea of El Charro a cowboy ghost killer of northern Mexico. This is not a Latino film, it is a film with a ghost killer who originates in Mexico. That is the only connection. The character Maria sure enough is supposed to be of mexican descent but there is only a slight connection through the film. Her visions are of places in Mexico, even though the film location itself is in Arizona.

The script focuses on a road trip to a small Arizona town. These four girls, the All American girl Christina (Heidi Androl), the Goth Rosemary (KellyDawn Malloy), The strange and disturbed by dreams lead character Maria (Drew Mia) and possibly the worst stereotype of a young black woman ever put on film, the saucy and sexually aggressive Tanya (Kathryn Taylor). There is a girl gone wild vibe but not really in what ends up being a fairly tame horror film. In fact I think it is how the male writer sees a girls road trip but does not really get it right. Christina is taking her friends down to her Uncle's house for a week of partying and relaxation. It is more like a bunch of guys getting out on the road than woman. The interactions just do not come across as correct, something is a bit off. The purposeful contrast between the characters makes one think that this group would never hang out together but so be it. Including Maria is Christina's idea (They are college roommates) but the other two make it clear that the depressive trouble girl is really not welcomed. In what can only be described as a scene straight out of a bad teen soap opera they directly confront the sad sack so she knows the pecking order in the group and she is dead weight. Although it would be way more likely that Tanya and Rosemary would play nice but maybe internally want Maria to leave instead there is this outward show of disdain. It is more like when young men create a pecking order than when women do. Maybe it is because the writer is a man that this is so skewed, or maybe to have conflict so the story will have more to it; Either way the dynamic is a bit off.

Maria is troubled by dreams of her sister, who recently committed suicide. This eventually gets worse as the movie progresses and through them we learn of the titular curse.

The story takes the girls through desert highways and small towns where they work there way out of trouble through flirtation and possible sexual favors. It is left unclear but Tanya appears to go down on a sheriff who pulls them over. She claimed to have other tricks being the sexual beast she is. They eventually make it to the very nice house and then head into town for some dancing and drinking.
Picking up some local men they head back to the house to continue the party.

Mixed in with this is the story of El Charro (acted by Andrew Bryniarski but voiced by Danny Trejo) , he was a wealthy Mexican land owner who had his eye on a village girl. Shown through silent film style and influenced by the directors fondness for German expressionism the story is in fact the most stylistically interesting part of the film. When spurned by the girl he desired El Charro goes off and kills her. The townspeople angered by this act hang El Charro but as he died he cursed the family of the girl. Now how this brings us to the present some 100 years later is quite the question. If El Charro always comes back for the descendants of the girl how are there any left 100 years later? Maria and her sister are getting visions of the creeper driving the sister to take her own life but why these two? What about their parents? Grandparents? It does not make a lot of sense but sense is not what this film is about. There is an early scene where after a conversation with a priest the priest makes a call to his superiors to talk about her having visions like her sister. This seems to indicate a bigger story with the church involved but the film never comes back to it. Only in the last scene do we see him again but really it is too late then. Other than letting us know she is having visions and so did her sister it adds nothing.

What also does not make a lot of sense is a ghost that walks to where he wants to get to. Here we have a ghost who stalks like a serial killer but at other times just appears. It makes no sense.

Made for 200 thousand dollars you can't expect a superior film but technically the film is well put together, music, sound and filming is not bad. The director was not unskilled and the makeup for El Charro was decent. The acting was not great but some of that was not the actors fault. So where does this film fall down? Well the writing of course, and I would like to say in particular the character of Tanya is a fine example of what not to do in a script. She is the worse stereotype of a black woman, aggressive and mean, with a cat like stance ready to pounce on any weakness. Her interactions are selfish and she while sexually the loose girl of the group is also dismissive when not impressed by a man. At the end of talking about her is the incredibly dreadful dialog she spouts. Here are some wonderful examples of what not to have your young black female character say.

While waiting for Maria who is late, her first line to establish her personality.

" Christina didn't we beg you to tell her freaky ass to stay home?"

" Okay fine she can come, but she better not fuck up my game or I'm kicking her ass."

" Oh and that goes for you too bitch, this is a vacation not a funeral." to the goth.

" Can I help it if I got needs, and don't even trip, you Marilyn Manson looking mother fucker."

When introduced to Maria, "Oh are you coming with." "Anyway you two can sit in the back."

Then immediately challenge sexually by Rosemary we get the comeback.

"Oooo, some lucky man is going to be flossing with these tonight." and "Well we'll just have to see about that. Or maybe I'll have mercy on you and save you my sloppy seconds when I'm done with them."

When introduced to the music for the ride a band called Tard, "Tard! Hell yeah that is the shit! Oh I like them. Arizona here we come."

It is not cool that instead of a mature character the black woman is a smart assed slut. Our societal stereotypes for black women as rude and over sexualized is not something we need reinforced.

So they are driving down the road and Rosemary brings out the pot to smoke and our girl says "Oh you are so sharing that bitch." and then starts singing "Pass the weed, pass the weed." takes a drag and says "Now that's what I'm talking about." " Oh and that was some good shit." Her coughing fit gets them noticed by the cops and the creepy sheriff that pulls them. Here we truly get her stereo type she flirts with the cop. The cop takes her to his car and they both get into the back seat. We see through the rare view window that she goes down on the cop. When she comes back laughing and joking with the cop she tells her friends. "What are you talking about? Like I don't have more tricks up my sleeve that that, God."

I think you get the idea, it was really offensive. I am not sure if it was an intentional joke to have El Charro rip off her jaw as a means to killing her.

So Maria has more visions and the killing comes and slowly we work our way through the death and destruction. We learn all about the curse through Maria and her visions and it is clear through the silent film dreams that this killer ghost is coming for her. She also seems to have a protector in Saint Michael. It is all too confusing. The final scenes are gory good but the film as a whole is not.

When the story gets back to the house with all the locals and the girls we have plenty of bodies for El Charro to machete through. He has to walk to the house so the killing does not start until well over an hour into the movie. At this point the couples are pairing up doing drugs and drinking. A good time I guess in the Arizona desert.

The additional twist at the end was so cliche that any good feelings you had towards this film vanish in the tangle of the straight jacket. I hate when supernatural stories end with, oh it was just a woman who went crazy, but there you have it.

Rating (3.1) 5.0 and up are recommended, some are just more recommended than others.

Machete (2010) - Action

Machete (2010) - A former Mexican Federale left for dead after being betrayed by his own boss, Machete (Danny Trejo) comes illegally into the United States. He is picked up a a day labor stop by Booth (Jeff Fahey) the powerful aide to Senator McLaughlin (Robert De Niro). Booth wants him to kill the violently anti-immigrant McLaughlin, well that is at least what he tells him. Really it is an elaborate set up to blame an immigrant for a shooting and get the senator reelected. The stellar cast includes Luz (Michelle Rodriguez), as the head of an underground immigrant movement called the network. Torrez (Steven Seagal) as the arch enemy of Machete and former boss in Mexico who now leads a major drug cartel. Jessica Alba as a young immigration officer rounding up illegals. Cheech Marin as Padre the brother and priest of Machete. Lt. Stillman (Don Johnson) as the leader of a vigilante group who hunt and kill immigrants as they attempt to sneak across the border. There is also an amusing turn by Lindsay Lohan as Booth's daughter April.

Machete for the most part is on the run in this movie, there is lots of killing and funny dialog with the plot winding its way to a giant conclusion, a fight between the network and the vigilante group. Machete also gets a showdown with Torrez which is a great finish. Writer Director Robert Rodriguez has done a great job bringing forth many of the issues of illegal immigration and how the US on one hand wants the labor while also vilifying the participants. There have been complaints in reviews of this film saying it is heavy handed in its messages. This writer does not see it that way. What Rodriguez did was create a story that includes the issues and also give a multifaceted reading of the issues. The serious scapegoating of illegal immigrants in our society while ignoring the American who hire them and then drive down working Americans wages on top of it is not discussed her, what we see is how easy it is for American small businessmen to get cheap labor.

The film also has many wonderful turns and twists that make the humor and action an enjoyable trip. If you are looking for a fun and action filled movie this is the winner of the summer.

Rating (8.3) 5.0 and above are recommended, In the Zombiegrrlz rating system Go See it and then Buy it!