Machete

Guilty pleasures are a wonderful thing. In the same way that a Metaller might admit to liking the odd Bon Jovi track or a Rugby fan might secretly wish there was more American Football on TV, I bloody loved watching 'Machete' at the Bracknell Odeon last night.

'Machete' is the film of the trailer. Not in the same way that normal films are films with trailers though, this is a film made off the back of the fake trailer in the Robert Rodriquez / Quentin Tarantino double bill Grindhouse. In the trailer we see a massive dirty great Mexican scumbag / ex cop (Danny Trejo) hacking, shooting and dismembering his way through piles of dirtier and even less-appealing Mexicans, Gringos and all manner of other goons. Grindhouse wasn't that good, and the Machete trailer was one of the best bits, but when I discovered that Robert Rodriguez was actually planning to turn it into a bona-fide film I feared it'd make a bit of a dud. What looks fun in a trailer can't make for much of a good 90 minutes. Or can it...

The film opens with Machete being backstabbed by his Mexican Federale bosses and his wife being murdered by a local drug lord (Steven Segal - fuck yeah!). Machete is presumed dead; but fast-forward to Texas 3 years later and here he is, struggling to find work with the rest of the dishevelled illegal immigrants from south of the border. The surprisingly famous cast are slowly introduced; Michelle Rodriguez is a legal immigrant helping the illegals get their lives together, Jessica Alba is the local immigration officer and Robert DeNiro is the Texas senator who shoots Mexicans for fun while running for re-election. Machete is hired by DeNiro's aide to 'shoot' the senator. Machete is in fact set up though, the whole shooting incident is to be used as an excuse for tighter border controls and help the senator win re-election. Machete escapes though, and wants his revenge - they've just "... fucked with the wrong Mexican". This is where it gets fun.

We get a bit of Texas politics, a bit of bad Steven Segal hamming it up, a bit of De Niro slipping into his New York accent and a hell of a lot of extreme violence, blood, dismemberment, disembowelling and - strangely - laughs. Especially funny is a part where some hired guards have a conversation about why they're bothering to protect such a nasty man from someone as dangerous as Machete. Thankfully Machete gets past them without having to kill a single one - nice of him to do that.

For a film that involves quite so many extremely hot girls getting extremely naked I think it scores fairly highly on the feminism test. Rodriguez and Alba both play strong characters who are leaders of men. The fact that Rodriguez comes out kicking ass in her bra at one point or that Alba stars in a technically unnecessary shower scene need not detract from that. If anything the film is anti male, as far more simpering male idiots are dispatched by Machete than helpless girls are mishandled by the baddies. The only bit that's completely gratuitous is the appearance of Lindsay Lohan; who remains naked for essentially the whole film and seems to have no real sensible inclusion - apart from the being naked part obviously.

I knew I shouldn't really have enjoyed Machete quite as much as I did, but whether its meant to be a spoof of the genre or a film firmly rooted in that genre it still made me laugh out loud several times. And who can say fairer than that? Sometimes it's the guilty pleasures that are the best.