“Machete’’ began life as one of the fake trailers in “Grindhouse,’’ the 2007 Rodriguez-Quentin Tarantino collaboration that allowed both directors to pay homage to their splattery ’70s drive-in roots. Part of the gag was seeing Trejo, an ex-con and boxer who since the mid-’80s has been a visual signifier of extreme threat in the corner of over 140 movies, pretend to have a shot at a lead role. The far better gag is that Trejo holds the center of the expanded “Machete’’ beautifully, his death-whisper voice and that unforgettable slab of a face, etched with creases and sin, providing an anchor for the supporting stars to wheel around.
It’s fitting that Machete originated as a trailer, albeit a fake one, attached to Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s ’70s-exploitation-movie homage Grindhouse. Trailers routinely assemble the most exciting parts of a movie into a two-minute punch, and in trailer form, the spectacularly violent adventures of a Mexican vigilante, driven home by subterranean-deep narration, certainly looked like one hell of an awesome movie. But a trailer isn’t a film, and in producing the feature-length version of Machete, Rodriguez and co-director Ethan Maniquis haven’t made the necessary adjustments. They try to make Machete into an extended trailer that’s all best parts, stitched together by a sloppy, needlessly convoluted plot and a lot of bluntly explicit messaging on the immigration issue. It’s often stylish and exciting, but the pile-up of cool kills, hot bodies, and other unprocessed bits of juvenilia doesn’t add up to a good time…read more [A.V.Club]
Conveniently timed to sprinkle gasoline on the fires of the immigration debate, Robert Rodriguez’s splatter comedy “Machete” has already riled up hardliners in advance of its release. Although laughter is the appropriate response to this pulpy, lighthearted gorefest, its pro-Mexican, anti-American stance is so gleefully inflammatory that some incensed nativists may refuse to get thejoke.
Reacting to the film’s leaked screenplay, the radio talk show firebrand Alex Jones posted a YouTube video in which he warned that “Machete” could foment a “race war.” A comedy showdown with the Wayans brothers would seem more likely
Reacting to the film’s leaked screenplay, the radio talk show firebrand Alex Jones posted a YouTube video in which he warned that “Machete” could foment a “race war.” A comedy showdown with the Wayans brothers would seem more likely
No comments:
Post a Comment