Review of Machete (2010) by Mitchell B — 22 Sep 2014

Machete is a pretentious political drama disguised as a fun action movie. This film was set up to be a fun revenge movie like Deathwish. However, it soon becomes a pretentious commentary about the border. Those two things do not really fit together. Those things would be fine in separate films, but together they create a cluttered mess of a film which is what we have here. I thought that it was unneeded and it made the film very boring for me.

The plot is too crowded. All of the marketing for this film made it out to be a balls-to-the-walls actions movie. However, it's like the makers of the film saw all of the issues about the border that were really big at that time and decided to work it into the story. As I said earlier that is a bad move on their part. I would be fine with a story dealing with the Mexican border if it does not detract from the action and Machete himself, which is what happened. The film should have focused more on Machete and him getting revenge and the stuff about the border should have been in the background. Instead the revenge story is mostly an afterthought. It tries to be both a smart commentary about the border and a corny action movie at the same time, and it really does not manage either. You have much political dialogue in a lot of scenes trying to make you take it seriously, while you also have over-the-top scenes Machete using a guy's intestines to onto another floor of a building. That does not work.

The characters are not that great either. The main character Machete (Danny Trejo) is actually an entertaining character. If this film was a straightforward action movie he'd be fine. The problem is we do not spend as much time with him as we should and his priorities seem out-of-whack to me. The supposed main villain, Torrez (Steven Seagal), killed his wife at the beginning of the film. Instead of going after Torrez to get his revenge he is just wandering around Mexico looking for work. I think that this is there so they can introduce the boarder issue. I think that a lot of potential characterization for Machete is lost because of too much political dialogue getting in the way. If the movie was not concentrating so much on the border and hammering home a message we could have had more time with Machete and him getting revenge like he should be doing.

The other characters are not much either. Jessica Alba plays a border patrol officer, which immediately lost me. I do not buy her as an officer for one second. Michelle Rodriguez is alright but she is not in the movie that much. Jeff Fahey does the best job here in my opinion. I am a fan of Jeff Fahey from when he appeared in Lost.

Steven Seagal got it the worst. He was setup in the beginning to be the main bad guy of the film. However, after the beginning we only see him on a computer screen. Then at the end he appears out of nowhere to fight Machete to wrap up his arc. The fight was very lackluster. Machete does not even kill him. He kills himself for some reason. The whole ending was pretty lame to be honest.

There is some good about the film. The film looks nice. The effects look decent besides some scenes with obvious CGI blood. The action scenes were okay (besides the ending), but there were not that many of them.

Overall, this was a very lame revenge flick. All the marketing said it was a revenge/action movie. Instead we got a lame commentary about the border, which does not interest me at all. I would skip this one if you are thinking of seeing it.