Posted on 08/31/2010 6:00:04 PM PDT by La Lydia
In Robert Rodriguez's new grindhouse feature "Machete," the vengeful title character uses vicious cutlery to butcher his enemies. Could something similar happen to the movie when it's released next week? "Machete's" convoluted story explicitly takes place amid the current powder keg of an immigration debate and on the heels of Arizona's controversial anti-illegal immigration legislation. Crooked politicians, powerful drug kingpins, malicious border vigilantes, antsy day laborers, conflicted customs agents and angry revolutionaries seethe along the U.S.-Mexico border in Rodriguez's film...
... about a former federale who gets mixed up in a messy conspiracy on the U.S. side of the border, could become a political pinata...the film's star, Mexican-American Danny Trejo, thinks people will be surprised.
"I think Arizona is going to like this movie," said the man who is Machete. "It doesn't just deal with the guy who comes over the border to support his family; it deals with the corruption on both sides -- the drug dealers, the guys who are getting paid to bring people here and the politicians who, any time they need a good platform, choose immigration. So the feds may now really do something."
The first thing they might do is complain about the movie, which already has kicked up some dust. After Arizona's SB 1070 was signed into law in April, Rodriguez fired the first salvo when he pushed out a recut trailer on Cinco de Mayo that took aim at the state. A tacked-on introduction showed Trejo in character saying, "This is Machete with a special Cinco de Mayo message ... to Arizona." Mayhem, including shots of angry illegal immigrants rising up in rebellion, followed...
"When the first trailer came out, there was a stir," said Shannon McGauley, president of the Texas Minutemen, self-appointed immigration-law enforcers. "People were saying, 'They're making fun of us.' It had its desired effect -- it had some shock appeal."
Writers on other sites, some of whom had seen the trailer and read the screenplay, took up criticizing the film as "racially inflammatory" and as "glorifying a race war." The seeds of this interpretation are not hard to see.
Among "Machete's" more provocative elements are border vigilantes led by Don Johnson as a kind of avatar for Maricopa County's Sheriff Joe Arpaio and fake political ads for an incumbent senator whose platform is built on his "hard line against wetbacks" and a description of them as "parasites." That the two characters murder a pregnant Mexican woman to prevent her baby from being born in America and then shoot her distraught husband while uttering the line, "Welcome to America," underlines the point.
Anyone who wants to see Machete should follow the example of the director. Since it’s ok for people to sneak into places they shouldn’t be if they want to, I’m going to buy a ticket to see “The Expenadables” (caught it on opening day) and then go into the theater playing Machete. I get to benefit from Rodriguez’s work and he gets nothing. Not too different from illegal immigration.
While I’m sure the Academy will love it, I don’t believe I’ll be contributing to the Rodriguez kids’ college fund.
I watched the trailer of this yesterday on Youtube. That’s all I needed to see to know not to spend money on this piece of crap. Deniro plays a Senator...has a stupid ‘southern’ accent (more akin to Miss/Tx). Then there is a young twit standing above a crowd of illegals screaming “We didn’t cross the border (complete with raised fist!), the border crossed us”! (whatever the hell that is suppose to mean) I don’t keep up with the current crop of commie actors so she wasn’t a familiar face.
Anyway looks pretty pathetic. Supposedly partially written at the time of ‘Grindhouse’ and was taken from some ‘fake trailer’(??) shown at that time. Who knows but it looks like garbage (shock)
These guys are just interested in making money. It's irresponsible to play with people's lives like this just to make a buck. I'm all for free commerce and free speech, but this kind of amoral profiteering is shameful.
Great idea. I may try that.
BTTT
One of my lefty friends on FB was giggling that the Machete site hadn’t been flagged as racist and offensive yet, and therefore not kicked off of FaceBook.
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