So Tell Me About Machete: A Movieline FAQ

In keeping keeping with Movieline's fine tradition of reader service and/or forensic hype analysis, please find herewith the latest in our series of handy pop-culture FAQ's. This time around, it's Machete, which opens this weekend with all kinds of delicious contributions from Robert De Niro, Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Alba, Steven Seagal and the one-and-only Danny Trejo in the title role. You have questions, I've got answers (and spoilers, so be warned).

What is Machete, anyway?

Machete is a feature-length adaptation of a trailer that was included in Grindhouse, directed by Robert Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis from a script Rodriguez originally wrote for star Danny Trejo in 1993. (It was since rewritten with Alvaro Rodriguez.) It features Trejo as the title character, a former Mexican federale exiled to the United States after vicious drug lord Torrez (Seagal) kills his wife. Getting by as a day laborer years later, Machete is approached by the mysterious Booth (Jeff Fahey) to kill Sen. John McLaughlin (De Niro), whose anti-immigration policies threaten the flow of cheap labor into Texas. But nothing and nobody is what or whom they seem, from Alba's scheming immigration agent to Michelle Rodriguez's taco-slinging activist.

Is it any good?

I will mostly defer to Eric Hynes, whose full review is forthcoming here later this week, but in a word: Yes! It's a lot of fun, upholding its vintage-exploitation genre cred without feeling like one gigantic wink at the camera.

Did it really need a feature-length adaptation?

Well, considering that more and more trailers give away literally everything of value in the movie, and Machete actually builds on its trailer (which, remember, was a feature-length screenplay in the first place), and it's actually good, I think it's pretty fair to say this is as deserving of expansion as any Grindhouse trailer. Certainly more than Hobo With a Shotgun, anyway.

Does it use any of the older, original trailer footage for continuity's sake?

Yes, it does, including much of Machete's introduction to Booth, his confession booth interlude with "bro -- I mean, padre" Cheech Marin, and the pivotal armed-motorcycle-through-the-air effect. Pretty much everything else is new, including the footage of the senator, who has since, of course, been replaced by De Niro.

How violent is it?

It's not so much that Machete is violent -- which it definitely is in every head-severing, eye-gouging, limb-shattering way imaginable -- but rather that the film so frequently and unapologetically goes places with violence that you never expect. Some of it revolves around sight gags, some relies on cartoonish, bloody set-ups, and some focuses on the social repercussions of the issues at hand. To the extent it likes to alternate between these, Machete provokes quite a few relatively genuine shocks; Black Dynamite this is not. I won't give the film's most gruesome kill away, but let it suffice to say: It's gut-churning. Literally.

What are the lethal weapons creatively deployed throughout the film?

Aside from liberal use of the titular blade and a few dozen varieties of guns, kills are accomplished using a speeding car, "skullscraper" surgical knife, a spike heel, a meat thermometer, a meat cleaver, a corkscrew, a garrote, a sculpture, a shard of glass, a hydraulically augmented low rider, and a mallet and stakes. Other characters are seriously injured with a weed whacker and a nail gun.

Are we witnessing the ascension of Danny Trejo, leading man?

One can only hope; I feel like I've been watching him for decades, awaiting a real breakout. It's not like Machete is some nuanced showcase of technical skill or anything, but it's important to remember that as a dark comedy about vengeance, politics and general ethnic loathing in the Southwest, there's more going on here than just one-liners, fight scenes and scowling. This is a guy you do want to believe in -- much more than anyone in The Expendables, for example -- and Trejo's stoniness and weathered face give just enough to let you do so. When it's not peering through a target scope or getting punched, that is.

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