Day: February 11, 2012

The making of this movie started out as a joke, but ended up, well, still a joke. The Grindhouse movies that came out awhile ago came included with multiple fake trailers. I personally wanted to see the one involving a Pilgrim horror movie, about Thanksgiving. But the most popular of these was a gritty action movie called Machete, starring Danny Trejo. If you have a daily motion account, you can watch the first and arguably fake, trailer here.

But why do they call him Machete?

Machete used to be a Mexican Federale, but was betrayed on a kidnapping mission by the chief, Steven Seagal, who also had his wife and kids killed. Years later he is wandering Texas, doing small work, until Jeff Fahey gives him an offer. The Senator (Robert De Niro) is running on re-election and planning on deporting a whole mess of illegal aliens, and he wants Machete to assassinate him.

But while he has him in the scopes, he finds himself shot in the shoulder by a second sniper, who then also intentionally misses the senator. Ah! Jeff Fahey is an asshole! He set up Machete, to make it look like he, an illegal alien, tried to kill the senator who was trying to stop illegal immigration!

Well Machete escapes, and goes into hiding, into an organization lead by Michelle Rodriguez for illegal Mexicans, and with the help of Cheech Marin, a priest. While Fahey’s henchmen are trying to stop him, Jessica Alba is working as an immigration officer, trying to get to the bottom of it. Oh yeah, Lindsay Lohan plays the daughter of Fahey, whom ends up having a sexual encounter with her mom and Machete, before he kidnaps both of them.

So yeah, the movie involves trying to shed light to what Fahey/De Niro attempted, and free Machete from blame. But if he can also somehow deal with Seagall and the Mexican Cartel at the same time, why not? If anything, it probably means more killing and death.

“God has mercy. I don’t!” – Actual awesome quote.

So, I know exactly what this movie was going for. Gritty feel, fake trailer, over the top action, nakedness, whatever. It certainly tried. I just think it could have been more over the top. I don’t think it went far enough. The film obviously had a big political message attached to it, and that annoyed me. I wanted a more carefree mindless action thing, not them attempting to do a political plot. Generally when action movies only try to do a plot, it comes off worse than no plot, or a really good plot.

That is why my rating is low. I think it could have been more awesome.

Remake alert!

Did anyone even know that? Did anyone even care that The Mechanic was a 1972 film? I know I don’t. Back to the violence, please.

I am cutting my original joke, because this screen shot from the movie is hilarious.

What is a mechanic? If you answer a guy who fixes shit, that is an acceptable answer. But in the world of assassinations, it is a guy who will kill and make it look like natural causes, or an accident, or suicide. Very useful, that ability to kill and make it look okay. Right?

Jason Statham is one of those guys, of course, and the movie opens showing him do that shit. He gets paid mad monies from Donald Sutherland, one of the few people he gets missions from. Good friends they are.

UNTIL TONY GOLDWYN SHOWS UP. He gives him a new mission, to kill Sutherland! Why? Because he might have intentionally failed a mission in South Africa, and blah blah plot. So he does it. Unfortunately. At Sutherland’s funeral, Statham meets his son, Ben Foster, who has that young guy rage. So JS is all, hey lets make him a mechanic too! So he uses him as bait / to help kills, get him in the know.

Sure, there’s the fact that JS killed his dad, and made it look accidental, but that probably won’t come back to bite him in the ass, right? Right!

That chihuahua is not Photoshopped in.

Overall though, the story I just didn’t find that interesting. It went the obvious route, especially the supposed “twist” near the end. That twist is actually what was expected. Not having the twist would be a better twist. But you know, billing order and stuff, that matters. Jason Statham is the star, damn it. Acting is as you’d expect for the movie.

Action scenes were fine. But its amazing how these professionals tend to have things go wrong so often, despite all the supposed planning. I guess we have to assume that in the movie, that first success he did is how it normally goes, and that every other time in the movie happens to be not the norm, despite evidence showing the contrary.