Machete

Machete (2010) grew out of a fake trailer. When Grindhouse played in 2007, mock trailers in an old style ran between the films. One of them was for a film called Machete that did not exist. When audiences talked about the trailer more than the films, Rodriguez went and made it. The story: Machete is a former Mexican federal officer. After a cartel boss kills his family he lives in Texas as a day labourer. A businessman offers him money to shoot a senator. The assassination turns out to be a setup and he goes after them. The film is deliberately shot like a cheap seventies action picture: scratched stock, degraded colour, coarse cutting. The politics are open. Anti immigrant rhetoric, border patrols and day labourers are the direct subject and Rodriguez does not hide his side. Danny Trejo takes a lead for the first time. He and Rodriguez had worked together for years and Trejo had always been in support. Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, Michelle Rodriguez, Steven Seagal and Lindsay Lohan are in the cast; the casting is deliberately strange too. In one scene a man descends from a window on someone's intestine, which is exactly the film's sense of humour. A sequel followed and a third was never made. It runs 105 minutes. Good for: cult action, Rodriguez, and exaggerated violence. Less good for: the violence is extreme and showy, the story is thin, and the humour is coarse.