You Talking to Me?

Enough of all this arty-fartsy, namby-pamby, hoity-toity, Marxy-parksy kind of stuff. Let’s get down to some low down and dirty Joe Bob Briggs territory for a change.

You know, how many explosions, decapitations, bullets, litres of fake blood, real breasts, fake breasts, hotpants, sex scenes - the whole drill - can we see.

Well, B-grade specialist Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi) doesn’t disappoint, but then I’ve always thought he’s much more of an artist than his better-known pal, Quentin Tarantino.

Anyway, you just want to get into the aesthetics of the first New Mexico shot when a rundown car with our hero and a fellow Fed drives into frame and within seconds loyalties are affirmed and heads lose theirs to various thugs’ bodies.

Our hero,who is the closest thing we've got to Charles Bronson these days, doesn’t believe in guns when he can use the old slice,stab and twist technique – and he likes talking about his own myth in the third person. Danny Trejo as Machete Cortez performs the bad acting of the exploitation movies this one’s based upon down to a T, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

So does Robert de Niro, though whether Lindsay Lohan and Steven Seagal are actually trying to act badly is moot. The only thing one can say about him is that he’s very big, and she only comes to life once she’s in a nun’s garb and packing some pouting blonde heat. Being naked and stoned on screen is too much like real life, so that doesn’t count.

But the interesting thing is that there is, in fact, quite a serious theme underlying all of this. Mexicans want to get into America for a better life, God help them, and the Feds want to stop them. The drug lords want to help the Feds by erecting a huge wall, but for their own perverse reasons. They know that as much as the desperadoes want to get in, so does much of the American population want its drugs from down south to filter through.

Put up a wall and it chases up the price of narcotics and the lords sit pretty - which is exactly what the war on them seems to be doing anyway.

Moreover, anyone vaguely interested in how a movie is made could do worse than to marvel at how this one is put together. It’s got a good grungy soundtrack, fresh Mojave-Catholic visuals, a tongue firmly in its cheek - “and introducing Don Johnson” - and has such a good rhythm that it breathes like some heaving, sweating organism.

Like its long-haired, middle-aged peasant hero, in fact.

Moreover, it was made for $10-million and earned $14-million on its opening weekend. This could be because there’s plenty of blood, guns, crucifixes, hot rods, motorbikes and female flesh to be seen – though not much for the women, as it should be.

At first I was puzzled that Rodriguez prissily faded to black every time he got to a sex scene, but then it dawned on me that the whole film is legit porn anyway. I therefore have no hesitation in pronouncing Machete* a masterpiece.

Neil Sonnekus

* Out on DVD now.