Anyone with a soft spot for cheesy '70s actioners had to love the fake trailers included in "Grindhouse," the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez tongue-in-cheek double feature from three years ago. One, "Machete," seemed to have the makings of a real movie. So now we have a full-length "Machete" movie, and it turns out that, as usual, less is more.
This feature-length exploito-rific action-drama follows Machete (Danny Trejo), a tough Mexican federale whose family is slaughtered by an evil crime boss (a bloated Steven Seagal). Years later, Machete - his nickname comes from the giant blade he carries with him - is eking out an existence as an itinerant worker in Texas. An oily businessman (Jeff Fahey) in cahoots with a racist politician (Robert De Niro) hires Machete to be the patsy in an assassination attempt, but naturally, they're messing with the wrong man.
Meanwhile, Machete's friendship with a sexy federal agent (Jessica Alba) brings him into contact with a fiery female revolutionary (Michelle Rodriguez) working to form a movement to battle the politician's anti-illegal-immigrant stance. Then there's the businessman's daughter, a drugged-up mess played by Lindsay Lohan, who may or may not have read the script before her brief topless scene. However, for those eager to see LiLo in a nun's outfit blowing bad guys away, this is your movie.
It's a movie filled with girls, guns, splattering blood and cheesy dialogue, which would be great if it was as fun as the flicks it's aping.
Rodriguez, co-directing with Ethan Maniquis - an editor on some of Rodriquez's earlier films (including "Desperado," "From Dusk Till Dawn" and "Sin City") - wants "Machete" to be both a present-day thriller and a loopy throwback. But the retro shoutouts feel like add-ons. The best examples of wit are film-stock scratches and glitches that occur right at the moment a head or hand gets sliced off.
As for those whose heads stay on - at least for a while - Alba continues her evolution toward full-time tough chick, while Rodriguez, who's been there a while, wears an eyepatch and machine gun beautifully. De Niro does a mean Lyndon Johnson imitation, though Seagal, wearing Eddie Munster's hair, never rises above parody.
Trejo, an ex-con and ex-boxer with a face as craggy as Monument Valley, can certainly hold the plot together as an anti-hero. But pushing this real deal to "act" in the B-movie style of Bronson, Svenson or Roundtree is, frankly, cutting the ground out from under him.
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