Machete [Blu-ray]

Pre-Double Dip Warning!
Jan 3, 2011:
This isn't so much a review of the film itself, but of the product. I'm writing to inform people of a future Double Dip. In an interview in October 2010, Robert Rodriguez said that there is going to be an "Ultra-violent Director's Cut" of the movie to be released on home video. No release date has been announced for that DVD yet, but I assume that version of the film will have the usual Rodriguez extras such as a commentary, a film school, and a cooking school (all of which are not on the current DVD/Blu releases).

If you like "Machete" enough to buy it, but don't care about different versions, extras, etc., then go ahead and get this version of the film. If LOVE "Machete" and you want to hold out, then save your money and wait for the next version of the DVD/Blu that will come out. Fair warning: looking at the double dips for other Rodriguez films such as "Grindhouse" and "From Dusk Til Dawn", the next release could be possibly several months or...
Interesting reactions to a fun exploitation flick.
Machete is a parody of a parody of a parody and it is extremely fun. Machete is a throwback to the old "grind-house exploitation" movies that tried to have a plot (which were always awful) and sometimes even a "massage" (which were terribly portrayed as well, although one understood what the "message" might be, whether it be as simplistic as "don't brake the law", or more sensitive subjects such as "rape", etc. In this case Latinos, which in some instances ARE being mistreated in this country, "illegal" or not, is part of the "plot" and "message"). In the 1970's these types of movies were seen, or at least attended to, for pure fun (and if one had a significant other, to play fun "games" in the darkness of the theater). And this is what Machete (along with Planet Terror and Death Proof) was intended as: a cheap, fun, exploitation flick. If these types of movies are "terrible" that's because they're SUPPOSED to be "terrible".
"Machete don't text."
It's wildly exaggerated. It's supremely ridiculous. It spoofs its message. Huzzah! It's the action-packed motion picture, MACHETE, that you aren't supposed to take too seriously. It fulfills the promise raised in one of the faux trailers from the 2007 theater release of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's double-billed GRINDHOUSE. A slew of big name actors graces this exercise in pseudo-exploitation cinema, but towering above them all is Danny Trejo as the brutish, laconic Machete Cortez, that vengeful ex-Federale. Trejo's face is so weathered it resembles a page out of a Thomas Guide. And yet he is somehow a chick magnet, if you buy into the film. No less than two hotties - Michelle Rodriguez and Jessica Alba - throw themselves at him.

When one sets foot on the vengeance trail, it's best to have a huge friggin' machete to wave around menacingly. Machete Cortez is an old school sort of hombre stalking a modern world. His impractical tool of choice is the machete, even...
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