Machete

Posted May 25, 2012 by Speed - 0 comments

Machete Cortez is a former Mexican federale who, after he got betrayed by his colleagues and his family got murdered by drug lord Rogelio Torrez, left Mexico to spend the rest of his days in the US. After seeing Machete in a fight, Michael Booth hires Machete to assassinate Texas Senator and racist John McLaughlin who’s running for re-election and focuses his entire campaign towards the “infestation” of illegals in the area.

However, Machete is being set up. Booth uses the assassination attempt as a PR stunt to give the Senator extra credibility and use Machete as an easy scapegoat. Machete manages to escape and decides the time is over for laying down and getting stepped on. Booth didn’t realise he didn’t hire a simple day worker but a legendary federale and he’ll regret that mistake for the rest of his (short) life…

Sound and Vision:
To get the grindhouse feel, Machete has plenty of dust and scratches present, all of them being intentional. They give the movie a very grunge atmosphere but never distract from the amount of detail that’s present. Colors are vibrant and fine detail pops up vividly, giving Machete a really cool three dimensional feel. Extremely stylized, Machete is great to watch even if skin tones are often going towards orange. Still, its grindhouse nature will never make it demo material.

If there’s one thing you can say about the sound it’s that it’s loud. Sometimes just for the sake of being loud, but we really don’t mind in this case. Localisation is great, bass is running rampant and dialogues are crystal clear. The only minor downpoint we could note is that some scenes where room dynamics come over a bit cheap like the scene where Lohan gets shot with crowd noises only coming from the front. All in all, this soundtrack perfectly fits with the movie.

Extras:
None

Conclusion:
Back when Rodriguez and Tarantino made their Grindhouse double feature, also a couple of fake trailers were made to heighten the grindhouse feel. One of those was for a supposed movie called Machete about a Mexican federale out for revenge. It was so over the top that many people really got excited about it and Rodriguez decided to make it into a full feature film. And that’s how Machete came to exist.

All the footage from the trailer is present and Rodriguez managed to spin an entire story around it, even if it’s thin. Added with a whole slum of famous actors, we get a totally over the top action vehicle that has Danny Trejo run rampant with excessive violence as a result.

Machete is a simple movie but it’s great in its simplicity. As a typical grindhouse-style movie is excells in going above and beyond in almost every aspect and it will for sure make you laugh out loud several times when you see the blood splattering all over your screen. Machete isn’t to be taken seriously and the acting may not be top notch all the time, but when has a grindhouse movie ever been about good acting?

Machete is pure fun, and manages to deliver everything it’s original (fake) trailer promised. Great stuff!

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