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 Pretty much everything else is new, including the footage of the senator, who has since, of course, been replaced by De Niro.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.
Is this Lindsay Lohan's comeback role?
Probably not? Though she's in on one hell of a joke: Starring as Booth's daughter April, she's hauled out of a filthy drug den by her father (who kills basically everyone inside and later reminds her to come to him for narcotics), where she promptly pukes on the lawn. Later scenes qualify Booth's icky, more-than-fatherly interest in her, but it's not until she slaps on her avenging-nun get-up that her self-possession picks up speed. And by then the movie's essentially over. But she'll be back.
Is she really "nude the whole time"?
No. In fact, despite last week's report to the contrary, I'm not totally sure that Lohan's one fully topless scene in a menage a trois with Machete and April's mother is even her. Her face is turned away from the camera and conspicuously obscured by her hair. Whether or not its a double, the scene lasts maybe 10 seconds. When Machete kidnaps the ladies after their tryst, she does wake up nude in a church, where the only available garment is the nun's robe and habit. Her hair falls over her breasts as she approaches it, though, and it's not an especially revealing look. So we're talking about something like 45 seconds of a role comprising maybe six or seven scenes. Sorry, pervs!
Does she really lick a handgun?
Alas, no. Her oral gun fixation is limited to character posters and photo shoots only. But she does seem to find God, which is almost as shocking.
How bad is Robert De Niro's Texas accent?
Terrible, but he's also in the joke: McLaughlin essentially is just Robert De Niro playing a virulently racist Texas senator. In private, he might as well be Jake LaMotta or Al Capone.
How is the rest of the ensemble?
Strong. Alba and Michelle Rodriguez play well off each other; Marin and the oily Fahey have a wild scene together; Seagal is Seagal, framed mostly in a computer screen and not too conspicuously girthy; and Don Johnson, as the border-patrolling vigilante Lt. Stillman, is full of dark-hearted sociopath majesty. In a film full of such vile creeps, it takes a special something to really claim that HMFIC distinction. Johnson has it. And he lives to fight another day, making him a kind of Darth Vader to Trejo's Machete Skywalker for another two films at least. Without the secret paternity thing, of course.
Will there be a sequel?
Per the closing credits, anyway: "Machete will return in Machete Kills and Machete Kills Again!"
Will it yield any one-liners?
"Machete don't text." And possibly, "Blood of Christ? Tastes like merlot to me."
What does it mean for the debate over illegal immigration?
Probably nothing in the long run, but it's timed pretty exquisitely to dovetail with the ongoing immigration battles in Arizona and elsewhere. (As a Fox release, it'll be interesting to see how Fox News handles its pro-immigration/anti-zealot callout, if at all.) And already the film chief in Rodriguez's home state of Texas is undecided on whether to grant state tax incentives to the production, which was produced entirely locally in Austin yet satirizes corrupt, homicidal senators and their even more bloodthirsty cronies on the border. Developing...
What is its box-office potential?
Good question: On a Labor Day weekend with Expendables still skimming off the top and George Clooney lurking with The American, is $12 million attainable? I can't see it dipping below $10 million, especially if buzz holds up the way it has over the last few days. Anything else you want to know?