Machete

Use the term 'exploitation film' and it's about as vague as you can get in describing a genre as a whole. So how to describe them? Basically any movie made on the cheap -- to a point at least -- that appeals to a mass audience. This is not The Godfather or Lawrence of Arabia. These films through the 1960s and 1970s can be amazingly bad to watch (in a good way), and influenced directors like Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, both modern day directors who have done their own exploitation films, including Rodriguez's 2010's Machete.

It's been three years since ex-Federale, Machete (Danny Trejo), was betrayed by his boss, saw his wife and daughter killed and was left for dead. Now working as a day laborer in Texas, Machete is approached by the mysterious Booth (Jeff Fahey) who offers him $150,000 to assassinate Senator John McLaughlin (Robert De Niro), currently running for re-election. Machete agrees and takes the money, but he is double-crossed during the attempt. It was all a set-up, and McLaughlin was in on it to boost his re-election effort. Severely wounded and on the run, Machete is on his own, but he's looking for answers. You can follow his trail by the mangled bodies he's going to leave behind.

As a director, Rodriguez shot to fame with his ultra-low budget El Mariachi and kept climbing with Desperado, From Dusk Til Dawn and the Spy Kids series (I suppose on that last one). He already did a tribute to exploitation with Sin City and Grindhouse, but thanks to the fictional trailers from Grindhouse, he had the potential for this film. I understand the appeal of the genre; no pretensions about sex, violence, sex, drugs, sex, whatever. I love low-budget schlock, and all those touches are there. The grainy film, that distinct low-budget look, the ridiculous story, all there for us to enjoy. But the problem for me was obvious. You make an exploitation film and do it. Made for a little over $10 million, something just ain't right here.

The only thing I can figure? Instead of just being an exploitation flick, it comes across as a spoof. It has its moments, especially Trejo's stone-faced one-liners and reactions, including my favorite, "Machete don't text." Rodriguez just tries too hard to make those films he grew up on and loved. How many different ways can you see a machete decapitate, cripple, mangle and generally destroy a human being? I lost count, but the effort was surely made here. It's supposed to be cartoonish violence, but it ends up looking laughable. I don't know if it was just poorly done CGI or what, but the final product is bad. Low brow is one thing (and can certainly be a positive), but when Machete jumps out a window and uses a man's intestines as a bungee cord, I knew I was in trouble.

A veteran of 150-plus flicks, Danny Trejo doesn't disappoint as the titular character. He basically expresses no emotion, doesn't crack a smile and is required to look tough and be a badass who dispatches nameless henchmen in creative ways with a machete....oh, and usually saying a cheesy one-liner while doing it. That's all. Trejo nails the part. Give Rodriguez credit. The man can put a cast together. De Niro hams it up as McLaughlin with Fahey being a gravelly-voiced scene stealer as Booth, the senator's aide. In the eye candy department, we've got Jessica Alba (can't act, semi-nude scene), Michelle Rodriguez (can act, no nude scene), and Lindsay Lohan (can't act, topless). In the flashback department, we've got an enormous-looking Steven Seagal as a Mexican drug lord and Don Johnson as a vigilante "protecting" the U.S./Mexico border. Rodriguez favorite Cheech Marin is another scene-stealer as Padre, Machete's shotgun-toting brother who happens to be a priest. Also look for Shea Whigham as Booth's inept henchman.

The story that revolves around Machete's revenge efforts include De Niro's Senator, Seagal's drug lord, Johnson's border vigilante, and an evil conspiracy to control the border to curtail illegal immigrants coming into America. I'm all sorts of democratic, but I don't want any message shoved in my face in a movie named 'Machete.' The whole angle, the angelic underground network helping people across and the dastardly evil big business, gets to be too much in a movie that had a whole lot of too much for me.

Look, I get it. This isn't a movie meant to be over-analyzed and critiqued within an inch of its life. It's about seeing Machete bed down every woman he meets (almost), about twin nurses in short skirts firing machine guns, about a tricked-out, machine gun packed motorcycle, countless decapitations, perfectly slimy bad guys, topless Lindsay Lohan, and all that beautiful low-brow humor and violence that most films just can't get away with. I just didn't like it. Exploitation is one thing, but I can't get over the fact that it plays far too much like a spoof. I of course might be alone in this sentiment. The sequel, Machete Kills, is due in theaters next summer.

Machete <---trailer (2010): * 1/2 /****

Predators

One of my favorite 80s movies is Predator with a cast that includes the Governator, Carl Weathers, Bill Duke, Jesse Ventura, and one of the coolest movie monsters ever...albeit from a different galaxy.  It was a men on a mission movie on steroids, a team of specialists working together to survive attacks from an unknown, unseen galactic killer.  How could that movie not be good? I was somewhat suspicious then when I found out a new Predator movie was being made, this past summer's Predators.

If you're going to go back to the well of a successful film franchise, you might as well do it well.  Director/producer/writer extraordinaire Robert Rodriguez steps in for this movie which is really more of a reboot than a sequel to the 1987 original. There was a certain charm about the original, a low-budget feel with some great casting and great action, different from most sci-fi action movies from the 1980s.  Rodriguez and director Nimrod Antal don't alter a successful formula too much, sticking with what works and doing just enough different to keep things interesting.

Waking up from a deep sleep (that he can't remember how he was knocked out) in a free fall, a man named Royce (Adrien Brody) has a parachute deploy right before he crashes into a thick jungle below.  He doesn't know who did this to him, or where he is, but soon finds there are seven other people just like him similarly dropped into the jungle.  What's going on? Royce begins to piece things together as the seven are introduced.  This little group include some of the world's best killers -- with one odd exception, a doctor (Topher Grace) -- and they're all packing ridiculous amounts of firepower.  It doesn't take long for them to figure things out; they're on a planet in another galaxy being hunted by a pack of predators on some sort of game preserve...and they are the game.  Can they band together to survive or will they be picked off one by one?

Let's start at the beginning, one of the best openers in an action movie I've seen in awhile.  No background, no introduction, just an opening shot of Brody's Royce in free fall trying to figure out how to open his parachute.  He manages to just in time, still landing not so lightly in the jungle below.  Other people start to pop up and figure things out as to what's happening.  Obviously as a viewer of a movie called Predators, we know what's going on (especially if you saw any of the previews), but the sense of the unknown still carries the movie in its first hour.  It follows the Jaws rule of hiding your creature/attacker/monster, waiting a full hour before we get a glimpse of these galactic hunters.  In this thick jungle, anything could be hiding, and Antal packs the story with tension to spare.

Just like the original, the story requires a group of specialists to work together in this hellish situation.  I'll be the first to say that Adrien Brody doesn't strike me as much of an action star, but boy, I was wrong.  He nails the part of the loner mercenary who doesn't care much for his fellow survivors/killers.  The rest of the hunted include Isabelle (Alice Braga), an Israeli sniper, Cuchillo (Danny Trejo), a drug cartel enforcer, Nicholai (Oleg Taktarov), a Russian special forces soldier, Mombasa (Mahershalalhasbaz Ali), a leader of a Sierra Leone death squad, Stans (Walter Goggins), a Death Row inmate, Hanzo (Louis Ozawa Changchien), a Yakuza killer, and Grace's doctor. Some are developed more than others, Isabelle Nicholai and Hanzo rising above the rest, but half the fun is figuring out who's going to survive and how the rest are going to meet their grisly end.  There are some surprises along the way that certainly kept me guessing.

Now while I liked the movie, the second half just can't keep up the momentum of the first half.  We meet Noland (Laurence Fishburne), a member of a previous hunt who somehow survived the Predators' attacks.  The pacing bogs down after moving a mile a minute early on even with Fishburne hamming it up like nobody's business.  His part amounts to a quick cameo (he's only around for two scenes), but it's a memorable part.  The pacing slows down some and goes with the tried and true formula of team running, Predators chasing, members being picked off, epic showdown to end it all.  The finale makes up the sometime slow pacing as Brody's Royce goes toe to toe with the biggest, baddest Predator. Also an especially bright spot is Hanzo's showdown with one of three Predators in an open field in the dead of night, a very stylistic, very cool action sequence in its subtlety.

What I thought was cool overall was how the 2010 version paid homage to its predecessors.  Braga's Isabelle has a great monologue that links this movie with the 1987 original, a great scene that any fans of the original will appreciate.  We also get some more background information on these Predators (more than just galactic killers) and why they do what they do.  Add on a similar score that moved the action along in 1987, and you've got some great elements that add up to an above average, well-made action movie.  And surprise, surprise, the ending leaves the door wide open for a sequel.  I'm looking forward to it.

Predators <---(2010): ***/****