Jimmy P's House of Movies

I don't know about you but I am getting really tired of the term "grindhouse". It seems that every genre movie that is coming out these days owes something to the "grindhouse" movement. I call it a movement because that's what it seems to be. Any genre movie that has come out since 2007 seems to owe something to this movement.

Why 2007? Because that is when the Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino megabomb Grindhouse was released. This movie started a new trend in film making, marketing, and the way that critics describe a movie. Over the last three years we have been bombarded with dvd releases that carry a banner along the lines of "the grindhouse classic" or some shit like that. Movies have been marketed as grindhouse-type films and critics have referred to more than one movie as a "throwback to the old grindhouse movies."


Now, don't get me wrong. I love gratuitous nudity and graphic violence as much as the next person, but this grindhouse shit has to stop.

Now that I have that off of my chest I can talk about Machete, the new film from Robert Rodriguez. If you were one of the few that actually saw Grindhouse in the theaters (or saw Planet Terror on dvd), then you know what Machete is. For those that didn't here's the scoop: to get the whole grindhouse experience, Rodriguez and Tarantino had filmmakers come up with fake trailers that would play in front of Planet Terror and Death Proof. The trailer that played before Planet Terror was Machete, played by Danny Trejo. The trailer played to huge applause at the screening of Grindhouse I attended and Rodriguez talked for a long while about turning Machete into a real movie.

Trejo once again plays Machete, a federalie who is trying to save a kidnapped girl. His superiors tell him to back off, but Machete won't listen. He storms to compound where the girl is being held, but it turns out to be a set-up. Machete is thought to be killed, but you can't keep a good badass done.

Flash forward three years. Machete is now in Texas working as a day laborer. He is hired by Jeff Fahey to kill a senator (Robert DeNiro) who opposes immigration of any form. Trejo takes the job, but is set up by Fahey to take the fall. It turns out that De Niro's numbers have been falling in the polls, so Fahey hired someone to shoot De Niro in the leg. This makes him out to be the victim and Trejo turns into the fall guy.

Of course, Trejo wants revenge and turns to an ICE agent (Jessica Alba), a revolutionary (Michelle Rodriguez), and his brother (Cheech Marin) who happens to be a priest, to help him take down De Niro and Fahey.

This movie is loaded with stars. Not only do we get the stars that I already mentioned, but we get Steven Seagal, Don Johnson, the boy Spy Kid, Lindsey Lohan, and the babysitter twins from Planet Terror. It was really cool seeing Seagal back on the big screen as he has been absent from it since 2002.

Machete, in keeping in the tradition of the "grindhouse" movie, is a really bloody movie. Since Machete is a kind of blade weapon you assume that he will be good with a knife, and he is. In the opening alone he cuts of at least five heads and a few arms. There is a scene where he cuts open a man's stomach, pulls out his intestines, and jumps out a window while holding on to them. Really sick stuff, but really cool as well.

The only real problem that I had with the movie is that it focuses too much on the story. The reason people went to a grindhouse movie was to see blood, guts, and nudity, and while this movie has plenty of all of those, the movie gets bogged down by its story. This is a minor complaint though.

So does the movie live up to the hype? Yes it does. This is a bloody, gory, and pretty badass movie that will have you cheering at the end. Danny Trejo proves that he can carry a movie and Jessica Alba isn't as annoying here as she is in other movies. Machete is a really good time at the movies.