To hear writer/director Robert Rodriguez tell it, his new film “Machete” is just good, dirty fun.
It just so happens to use the hot-button issue of illegal immigration as a launching pad for some B-movie mayhem.
Pardon my French, Mr. Rodriguez, but that’s [censored].
“Machete,” which opened nationwide Sept. 3, is as politically charged as a film can be without the words “Michael” or “Moore” attached. It doesn’t just argue in favor of letting illegal immigrants become U.S. citizens. It paints politicians who support enforcing the borders as cold-blood killers, sub-humans we should squash like insects.
And that’s … OK. My biggest beef with the film is that it’s borderline awful. Being a right-leaning film critic means you get used to absorbing film messages that clash with your own principles. You see it, note it, and then move on.
What galls me about “Machete” isn’t its bald political screeds, it’s Rodriguez trying to wave them away as harmless and not consequential to the story at large. Here’s Rodriguez spinning like the “Inception” top to Deadline Hollywood Daily:
More below:
“This was always about making a what would feel like a good old ’70s exploitation film,” Rodriguez told me. “What they did back in the day was, run out, make an over the top movie that exploited a story in the news so that it felt like it was ripped from the headlines of today, and move faster than studios could. That’s what we did … Immigration is still relevant, nobody has done anything about it, but it’s a smokescreen. The real Machete story underneath was always about an action hero you underestimate, who comes from a violent background, this incorruptible former Federale hiding out as a day laborer.”
Riiiight. That’s why the action comes to a screeching halt every 15 minutes so another character can make a stump speech about letting illegals become U.S. citizens.
“Machete” star Danny Trejo, who deserved a shot at playing a film’s lead at long last, is equally disingenuous in the interview:
“You can always find an issue in a movie … I always wondered, what was Snow White really doing with those Seven Dwarves that made them head off in the morning whistling so happily? Was she freaky for little people?”
The interviewer here doesn’t question their comments, he simply shapes the post around them. I’m remiss to critique his approach since I know that when you conduct celebrity interviews there’s usually a small window of time you have for questions. If you get bogged down with follow up questions, suddenly the PR handler enters the room and says, “time’s up.”
One might wonder why Rodriguez and Trejo won’t cop to what the film is all about. It’s simple. They likely know the public at large disagrees with their stance, or prefers not to be lectured to at the movies no matter where they stand on a given issue. Admitting there’s a palpable agenda behind the film will hurt its box office tally.
By the time audiences realize they’ve been snookered, they’ve already frittered away their $10.
(Photo: Jeff Fahey and Robert De Niro play crooked politicians in the new B-movie “Machete.”/20th Century Fox)
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{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Filmmakers like Rodriguez and his splatter cohorts (Tarantino and Eli Roth) are like overgrown teenagers who still see the real world in terms of the comic book worlds they create in their films.
It doesn’t occur to Rodriguez that his film could be seen as preachy or insulting to those he disagrees with, because he doesn’t take the politics of American immigration any more seriously than, say, Tarantino took the politics of Nazi-occupied France in “Inglorious Basterds”.
Thanks to Alex Jones and infowars.com for being first to expose the Machete controversy and the connection to Fox.
Thanks for taking a bullet for us once more, Christian. This movie sounds like [censored] and further more [censored] [censored] [censored] and then there is [censored] and don’t get me going about [censored]. This whole thing is [censored]!
Thanks for letting me rant.
I’m with you, Christian. The film could be liberal as all hell but still enjoyable (see “Robocop,” though it’s antagonists aren’t actually right-wingers in any meaningful sense).
Imagine this action movie plot: a humble Texan sheriff’s family is murdered by a gang of illegal immigrants. Distraught and seeking revenge, the sheriff wonders into Mexico, where he and a group of similar southern white men lecture about the evils of Latino immigration. By the end he has killed dozens of Mexicans, including a prominent politician known for speaking out against the U.S.’s border regulations.
Now, no matter how well-made or entertaining, would critics describe this as goofy, tongue-in-cheek fun? I think we know the answer, and the double-standard is pretty galling.
Well, it does seem to be flopping, so that’s some consolation.
I want Rodriguez to do a DNA test and reveal his 95% European heritage.
The point isn’t that WE aren’t interested in the film, the point is that with the rising violence coming over the border from the Mexican Drug war, the Hispanic gangs spreading across the nation’s cities, and the widening influence of La Raza on college campuses in the south west, Machete will become a cult film for people that hardly need more encouragement in their hatred of America.
As someone who believes we should have a very secure border and immigration restrictions, I found Machete hilarious. Yes, Rodriguez’s personal beliefs do come out in the film, but the whole thing is so over the top that I doubt it will convince anyone. After all, does Rodriguez intend to convince everyone that all—ALL—Mexicans work together in a secret network to undermine US Law?
I and my ultra-right-wing friend who viewed the movie together laughed out loud at the ‘We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us!’ speech even though we wouldn’t -for a moment- agree with it.
I am far more concerned about the little background snipes that occur in tv and films regularly than about a splatter film’s politics.
Any movie that resorts to giving Jessica Alba some lines has to a B or C movie…..nice looking but she can’t act her way out of wet paper bag……
Actually, the line “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us” is true … for White Americans. Who now suddenly live in a variant of Mexico. As third class citizens (or really, non-citizens) of Mexico Norte, or Amexica, or whatever you want to call it. It certainly is not the United States.
If I wanted to live in Tijuana I would have moved there. Instead, against my wishes, with no votes on it, or even consultation, Tijuana has been imported into America. Complete with the sort of violence and depravity that characterizes Mexico. Where 72 people, Central American immigrants, including a late-stage pregnancy woman, were brutally murdered by the ZETAs.
Rodriguez, Trejo, Michelle Rodriguez, Jessica Alba, and Cheech Marin got fame, fortune, and adulation by a nearly all White audience. And this is the movie they made.
You can throw as much wealth, fame, fortune, and adulation at Latinos, and they will always call for basically, a race war to make America dominated and controlled by Mexicans and Whites third class citizens. No greater evidence for this thesis can be found than the movie these people made. They have more loyalty to people who don’t share their nationality but do share their race than those who share their nationality but don’t share their race.
Assimilation is a joke. The melting pot a Colors of Benetton lie. All that matters, and all that will matter in human history, is race and ethnicity. That really, is “Machete’s” legacy. The true lesson of Robert Rodriguez.
So don’t go see the movie! I like these kind of films, highly stylized and over the top, but still a hero’s joureny. The fact that the story is sympathetic to illegal aliens was irrelevant to me. The action was great, Michelle Rodriguez and Jessica Alba were great to look at, and the other actors did a great job.
The movie SUCKED. Period. All the leftist craptastic spin is NOT going to cure that.
AND when the movie does what they (the director/producers/actors) get what they wanted, by stirring up MORE racial tensions, and MORE illegals, including the cartels – take ACTION with this :cough: portrayal of ‘fun’ as their ‘how to’ : whose going to bury those that are caught in the cross fire. hmm..?
The fact remains: MILLIONS have come into this country LEGALLY. You want to come in, do it the right way.. and NO one cares.
I think I disagree with Christian’s take on Machete’s politics, though in retrospect it was a bit too long to be good. I stand by what I said in the comments in an earlier thread — I believe the hard core Chicano/Latino studies types will hate the movie. And I think we’ll know just how seriously we can take the film when we see Rodriguez’s next cooking segment on the DVD. (Don’t forget the scene in “Machete” when Jessica Alba’s Agent Sartana says there is no problem that cannot be solved with food… seriously, Robert Rodriguez’s philosophy gets no deeper than that.)
Machete is a grossly irresponsible political screed. You and Rob Sanchez see through the Rodriguez and his excuse making. Read this:
http://www.vdare.com/sanchez/100911_machetes.htm
More Machetes: And Where Is The Catholic Church?—Cheering “Latino Power” On, By Rob Sanchez
I can not wait to see what more this writer has in store more of the truth for sure, as we all know the border came to us and we were here before you knew what Atzlan was? or maybe you don’t know? and we will be here when you are all gone.