Review of Machete (2010) by Damon B — 23 Jun 2012

This movie was actually a blast. Technically, this movie really is terrible- but it is made to be like that- when you have a person jumping out of a window using someone's intenstines to smash into the window of the ground below, and to have Steven Seagal as the villian- you know that this is not serious.

The dialogue is terrible, camera work is cliche, everything adds up to a film hat should be awful- but is just brilliant, simply because it was made to be this way, and is really funny, but also really entertaining.

This movie was created due to it's reception as a fake trailer in Grindhouse, which I am still yet to see, Planet Terror and Death Proof in other words. And I am definitely aware thta these movies were made in the same light as the Grindhouse movies because there is this odd amount of imagination that has gone into the killing of people, and because it is so unrealistic and stupid, it is amazing, as it is allowed to do that kind of action. It is like it has come from a child's mind, probably an evil child, or sick-minded child, but the way everything is treated is so playful, that I just started to have a great time.

I loved the cast in this movie, and they really drove a lot of this movie, I mean when you have a scene with Limdsay Lohan dressed as a nun, holding a machine gun, and then Robert De Niro dressed as a Mexican shooting people in the same shot, you should now be aware of what kind of movie this is. And starting with Danny Trejo, he really made the most of this movie, and made sure every line was said in some way that it just made me laugh, but also moved the story along nicely. Jessica Alba had a shower scne- all that needs to be said, she did her job. Michelle Rodriguez almost seemed to play this sexy version of herself, because normally she is just the man of the film, but a woman, she is always the tomboy- although she still has the same kind of character, but she plays it a bit more subtley, and she was one iof the characters that I actually started to believe in the movie. Robert De Niro, I acutally enjoed watching as he made me laugh, and I could tell that he was having a great time too, it was a bit like watching Stardust, where does something that isn't his cliche thriller character- he was having fun in a role. Lindsay Lohan wasn't in it that much, and thatwas a bit of a flaw within the movie, and because her character was never truly developed, and the relationship between the father and daughter , and the family as a whole, I didn't really know how I felt when certain events started occuring in the end. Steve Seagal is terrible in this movie, which is just so funny, and he tries tto do a Mexican accent and fails miserably.

Something else this mvoie has are some classic lines and scenes, set pieces etc- you get the idea. There is one line that is just so great, 'Machete don't text', and it is just such a bad line and suits the movie so well, it is very funny within the scene, and another scene with Steven Seagal, that is doen so awkwardly, but that then makes it so funny. This film is full to the brim with one-liners, and is a great movie to watch with a big group of friends, at a oparty or something like that.

The direction is great, as Rodriguez and Maniquis always seems to keep the movie in this playful tone, even though the moive is actually very dark in the sense of the violence, which is so graphic, that they just make it cartoonish, so that it doesn't seem like some Saw movie, with violence and nothing else. They make the most of this B-movie style, with the set-piece at the beginning having some really funny shots of severed heads falling into a frame for a second, then close ups of people's heads, really quickly. I love all hat kind of stuff, just parodying a movie genre, while not shoving it in people's faces like Scary Movie.... and Disaster Movie. Hate that movie. But this movie is a great time, it is flawed in the fact that a few scenes do drag, when there is no-one talking, which becomes a bit of a problem, as I found myself just wanting to scene the fun and playful stuff, and not when it tried to turn serious. Anyways, this is a fun and completely ludricous movie that will have you laughing and squirming throughout. Great fun.