It’s not often a movie with a sophisticated social conscience features the hero using a man’s intestine as a rope to rappel down a wall.
So let’s say “Machete” is not a typical movie.
Filmed in 70s-exploitation-movie style by director Robert Rodriguez, Machete blends hyper violence with political comedy targeted at the state of U.S. immigration laws.
And the message of the movie is dead-on: This country’s immigration laws are in a bloody, disgusting mess.
The plot (which often takes a backseat to the gore) is a twisted tale of drugs, revenge, political corruption and Texan rednecks with a thirst for Mexican blood.
Machete, played by Danny Trejo, is an ex-Federale double-crossed by fellow cop Torrez, who also happens to be a powerful drug lord. Torrez, played by Steven Seagal, has a ridiculous Mexican accent, leaving the viewer to judge whether this casting choice is itself a joke.
Machete comes to the U.S. to work as an undocumented day-laborer, charging $125 for septic-system work. Rather than this typical job, he is instead offered the opportunity to kill a racist hick senator, whose campaign platform is built on electrifying the border fence. The campaign ads for Senator McLaughlin, played by Robert DeNiro, are hilarious yet scarily accurate: How long will it be, really, before someone proposes a measure to simply kill everyone who tries to cross the border?
Booth, the shady political consultant who hires Machete to kill McLaughlin, convinces Machete to take the job with a speech on the merits of illegal immigration.
The speech made me sit up in my seat because it mirrored, more or less, a speech I heard a UNM professor give about immigration.
The entire economy of Texas, Booth said, would fall apart if not for the cheap labor provided by illegal immigrants, much like Mexico’s economy of would falter without the remittances sent home by undocumented workers. For a character who uses severed heads as comic props, Booth makes a cogent argument.
The immigration critique continues with the character of Von Jackson, a leader of a group of Minutemen-like vigilantes who prowl the deserts at night looking for migrants to kill.
It’s easy to imagine that one of these neo-fascist groups somewhere, like Jackson’s group in the movie, actually has a paramilitary compound in a junkyard stocked with machine-gun-mounted jeeps.
In one early scene, McLaughlin goes on a midnight raid with Jackson and shoots an unarmed Mexican man in the desert. He turned to a camera held by a fellow vigilante and said, “That’ll look great for my big-money donors.”
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The genius of this movie is that it would be shocking if real-life Republicans didn’t actually do that.
So, in sum, Machete is not for everyone. If you think blood splatter can never, ever be funny, don’t go see it. Likewise, if you support SB 1070, then this movie probably isn’t up your alley.
But for the rest of us, it’s a great ride and truly worth the obscene amount of money it costs to see a movie these days.
Oh yeah. I would also stay away from the movie if you’re absolutely repulsed by the thought of Jessica Alba and Lindsey Lohan naked.
Editor’s note: The opinions expressed are solely those of the author.
