You can't accuse Robert Rodriguez of being a hack.
Sure, "Machete" has more severed limbs than Paul Bunyan's recycling bin, but writer / director Rodriguez pumps up the gore, T&A and violence to such ridiculous proportions, that one half of the "Grindhouse" team shows the exploitation genre still has legs.
Even if those legs are bloody stumps dangling from a ceiling fan.
"Machete" first appeared as a trailer in 2007's "Grindhouse," the throwback collaboration between Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino that bombed at the box office but won in the eyes of fanboys and cinephiles.
Leading the hardcore parody - ripe with intentional editing gaffes and screen discolorations - is Danny Trejo. A frequent player in the filmmakers stable and oft-casted B-movie action star, the barrel-chested 66-year-old assumes the title role of an ex-Mexican Federale out for justice. (I'll let you guess his weapon of choice...)
After one bad dude played by ‘80s enigma Steven Seagal decapitates Machete's wife, another villain played by ‘90s softcore star Jeff Fahey sets him up in an assassination plot. The casting - which also includes Michelle Rodriguez, Don Johnson and Jessica Alba - is just brilliant. In how many movies do you get a climatic gunplay scene between Robert DeNiro as a dirty senator and Lindsay Lohan as an aspiring porn star-turned-nun?
Woven through "Machete's" creative kill shots and rampant fluid exchange sessions is a border race war between gun-slingin' vigilantes and an underground network of Mexican illegals and the gringos who lend a helping hand. But like everything in the over-the-top cheap thrill ride, it's tough to take it too seriously in the same movie where a naked chica uses her birth canal as a cell phone holder. Even Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer might laugh at "Machete" - and decide to throw out her cell phone belt clip.
"Machete" is a day laborer's wet dream that men and women of all immigration and employment status can enjoy together in peace, harmony and wanton blood lust. The only one who might ask for a refund is Shaft.
"Machete," with a running time of 105 minutes and rated R, is now playing nationwide. Mike gives the movie three out of four stars.
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