Machete ushering in an era of Mexploitation films?

Machete is the au currant tale of a former Mexican Federale, the titular Machete played by Danny Trejo, who escapes to Texas after a bloody showdown with a druglord. An illegal immigrant, he’s looking for yard work – but ends up being hired as an assassin by a local businessman who wants him to kill a corrupt senator on a deportation kick. Machete, however, is set up as the fall guy in a plot to drum up support for an anti-immigration agenda – and that’s when the fun really starts.

The film is directed by Robert Rodriguez, the Mexican-American director of B-movie influenced movies like El Mariachi, Desperado, Grindhouse and the Spy Kids franchise, and Ethan Maniquis. It also brings some interesting star-power, with Michelle Rodriguez, Don Johnson, Steven Seagal, Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Alba, Cheech Marin and Robert De Niro.

But more than that, Machete seeks to tap into the political zeitgeist with what is basically a gory pro-immigration story, bloody and violent where films like Under the Same Moon (La misma luna) were sweet and humanizing. It’s already attracted the ire of right-wingers (but really, what doesn’t?), despite the decidedly Mexploitation – and therefore ridiculous – style of the film.

So is it good? Sort of. Noting that the film is “conveniently timed to sprinkle gasoline on the fires of the immigration debate”, The New York Times, critic Stephen Holden opined, “Although laughter is the appropriate response to this pulpy, lighthearted gorefest, its pro-Mexican, anti-American stance is so gleefully inflammatory that some incensed nativists may refuse to get the joke.” And they should – because Machete is a fun ride: “The pace is swift, the tone playful, the screenplay peppered with one-liners,” but is “too preposterous to qualify as satire”. The Boston Globe’s Ty Burr loved it: “The movie’s an unexpected end-of-summer tonic: a trash guilty pleasure with a healthy (if really violent) sense of outrage. It’s also Rodriguez’s freest movie yet, and possibly his best.”

But Amy Biancolli, at The San Francisco Chronicle, found the film more repulsive than funny and a bit of a slog: The whole thing is monumentally gruesome and just as monumentally cynical, a riot of grisly cliches designed to titillate and amuse. I’m not sure about the titillation part, but the amusement factor comes and goes.”

However, the real question isn’t about the film’s place in the immigration debate – but its place in the Lindsay Lohan canon. Lohan’s turn as the  gun-toting, nun’s habit-wearing, drug-addled party-girl daughter of the corrupt senator (De Niro) has won plaudits from the critics and couldn’t come at a better time for her . But can she ride this upswing back into an acting career? “[N]ow that Machete has reminded us she’s an actor, Lohan has never had a better chance to seize upon this newfound momentum,” wrote Stuart Heritage on The Guardian’s Film Blog. “This, however, will require a lot of work on her part. To become the serious actor she’s always wanted to be, Lohan should forget about everything – Machete and jail and the slow-motion car crash that is her family life – and just start from scratch.”

Machete‘s message for Arizona:

More film »