Machete 2010 is about US politics of 2025 somehow
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Blender Dumbass👁 7
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An exploitation film is a film that exploits some talked about fear or trend in culture in order to sell tickets to a movie that is probably not very good. Exploitation films are usually low budget, badly made B-movies, with a certain charm to them, if you like Tommy Wiseau's work. 2010's Robert Rodriguez film Machete is, somewhat of an intentional attempt at recreating the exploitation film phenomenon. Which exploits US politics of 2025, somehow. ( Rodriguez must have a time machine somewhere in his studio ).
The film is about ICE and immigration of Mexicans into the USA. Or because it is an exploitation film ( or a parody of one ) it is a satire of ICE and immigration of Mexicans into the USA. And the movie is fucking hilarious, while simultaneously being fucking serious. This is a movie where you both get a guy named Machete use guts of a bad guy as a rope to swing out of a window like Tarzan, and a scene where border patrol of the USA kills a pregnant woman in fear of her giving birth on the US soil, because if somebody is born in the US, they are automatically a US citizen. I mean... if you don't like such intense emotional whiplashes, maybe stay away from this movie.
Quentin Tarantino famously envies the ability of Robert Rodriguez to just endlessly produce B-movie parodies all the time. They did the Grindhouse project together where both of them made one B-movie parody to be shown as a double-feature. Rodriguez made Planet Terror and Tarantino made Death Proof, which was the lowest rated movie in his career because nobody fucking got the joke. Tarantino needed to recover, making very intentionally great cinema pictures. While Rodriguez didn't give a flying fuck, and kept making B-movie parodies.
As a part of the Grindhouse project, to give the audiences the full experience, they produced fake trailers for fake movies ( with a help of a few director friends ). Rob Zombie ( that is a name of a film director ) made a fictional trailer of a film called Werewolf Women of the SS. Edgar Wright ( who directed Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim and Baby Driver ) made a trailer called Don't about horror movie tropes. Eli Roth made a trailer of Thanksgiving which he ended up actually making into a real movie in 2023. Jason Eisener and co. made a trailer of a film Hobo with a Shotgun which they made into a real movie too in 2011. And Robert Rodriguez made a trailer for Machete which he made into Machete in 2010. Being the first of the bunch to actually finish the project.
Machete in Machete is played by the Mexican Charles Bronson himself Danny Trejo who you may know from Rodriguez's Spy Kids movies as Machete. Isador Cortez or Machete is supposed to be the exact same character from both franchises. But here is a thing, Spy Kids is a kids friendly PG rated franchise. While the film Machete has blood ( with decapitation ) and full frontal female nudity in the first 10 minutes of the film. I can only imagine how much Robert Rodriguez was laughing coming up with all this shit.
From Spy Kids the first Machete film ( there are sequels ) also borrows Daryl Sabara who in the Spy Kids films played Juni Cortez ( one of the Spy Kids themselves ). In this film he plays a random Mexican teenager that hangs around Machete. Rodriguez thrown the concept of a "canon" out of the window. And you can say that another borrowed actor is Jessica Alba who later appeared in Spy Kids 4 ( filmed in 2011, one year after this film, and where Machete also appears. What the fuck Bob?! ).
Two of the most genius casting decisions of this film were Steven Seagal as the bad guy. Yes... the same Steven Seagal that stopped making anything remotely good back in the 90s. And that was putting out terrible direct to DVD movies for a very long time now. That Steven Seagal. Which was such a hilarious choice I cannot stop laughing. The second choice that is absolutely brilliant, to balance Steven Seagal out, is Robert De Niro, who won 2 Oscars, as another bad guy. Robert Rodriguez even dresses De Niro as a Mexican at one point of the movie, giving some of the most hilarious imagery in film history.
Lindsay Lohan is in the film. Her character ark will make you giggle. Michelle Rodriguez is here too, one year after Avatar, trying to get Robert Rodriguez ( no family relations there ) finally get a job with James Cameron on Alita: Battle Angel. Or something like that.
Cheech Marin plays this character that forces Rodriguez to become very inventive with the use of light. He is a Padre assassin type of character, who has everything in the shape of a cross around him. Even the shadows. Shea Whigham is here too, auditioning for the Mission Impossible movies. He plays basically the same type of character here. Just a bit of a more illegal type.
Twin Sisters Electra Avellan and Elise Avellan who appeared in Grindhouse ( both films ) as the hot babysitters watching over little Tony Block, played by Robert's own son, Rebel Rodriguez. His dad sure loves him, opening his character as this super-cool motherfucker that hangs around those two hot chicks. In Machete they play sexy nurses, because they are sexy, that help Machete with his, whatever the hell plot needs from him right now, stuff.
There is a lot and a lot of cool actors and characters in the film, but this review would have been too long if I tried to list all of them, so you have to look for yourself.
The film is intentionally stupid. Like in one scene you hear a Nokia ringtone followed by a shot of somebody picking up a Blackberry. The film at times looks cheap, both because it was cheap ( on $10.5 million ) and because it is trying to look as cheap as it can get away with. That is kind of the joke. Robert Rodriguez is very good with cheap film-making. His first film El Mariachi he shot with just $7225. And it was an action film. So I suppose Nicolas Winding Refn making Bronson on a quarter of a million is not so special actually.
Actually scratch both of them. My 3 short films cost together less than El Mariachi. Because I made all 3 of them on the cost of $0. So I beat both of them! And you may say I did cartoons, and that is not fair. Well my second short The Package, The Car & Time Is Running Out is a live-action action short. Yes it is only 2 minutes long. But I could have made this movie over and over again to fill a feature-length movie worth of material, which would still have costed me $0. Do the math.
Okay, technically speaking I couldn't make a proper movie without at least proper actors. And unless I want to beg for them to return every time I shoot another scene, I better pay them. Which is not something that I could do with my projects. On the other hand Robert Rodriguez here has an ensemble cast full of A-list and B-list actors, in an action film, on just $10.5 million. This is a fucking achievement.
Happy Hacking!!!
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