Machete Don't Work

It was with a heavy heart I made my way through Machete, knowing that a lot of my filmmaking fervour, both before and after university, and now, is inspired by Robert Rodriguez. I didn't see El Mariachi when it first hit, but Rodriguez's "Rebel Without A Crew" book, and a segment he did on BBC2's long defunct Moving Pictures show, told me I could shoot a movie. I still use a lot of the things I picked up from those two sources today, particularly in terms of maximising shots. It also got me interested in editing, which is my main work today, and my favourite area of production. I still read "Rebel..." from time to time (actually I appear to have lent it to someone, so I can't right now). To be clear, I owe Robert Rodriguez a great deal, and enjoy a lot of his films.

But not Machete. The time for this film - if there was one - was a decade ago, a cheap, quick Trejo-filled thrill between the initial Spy Kids movies. Coming as it does after Rodriguez-rot has long set in, it's not funny anymore.

I get the B-movie thing that Rodiriguez and to a lesser extent, Tarantino, are trying to do, but there must be better ways. Planet Terror got away with it as part of Grindhouse, but the thought of paying to see that standalone as a night's entertainment doesn't bear thinking about, and so it is with Machete.

Rodriguez's problem is that he's always been a bit scattershot with ideas, and he's not a great writer. He never was. He can come up with some funny lines, or good scenes, but when it comes to hanging it all together, it almost never works as a cohesive whole. Desperado, for all the great action, has terrible pacing. The first Spy Kids film worked wonderfully, and the second just about scraped by. But when Spy Kids 3-D came around, it kicked off the beginning of the end, when characters didn't enter the film for a good reason, but simply because they could pop into Troublemaker for a couple of hours greenscreen work and could then be matted into scenes later, never mind if it made sense or not. (One nice thing about Machete is seeing Rodriguez out on actual locations again - see, they still work!)

Also, Rodriguez has a tone problem. In the kids films, even the most evil villains are always redeemed (the idea in Game Over, that Stallone does all his bad stuff because he's searching for forgiveness, is ludicrous in an already ludicrous story) but in his adult work, you'd better not get attached to anyone, because they're very likely to be bloodily dismissed in a second. I barely made it through Machete's pre-credit sequence because of all the needlessly horrible killing. I don't mind any amount of murderous mayhem in a movie, but the wilfully horrible tone of - in this - Machete's wife being decapitated, coming after several hugely bloody kills, nearly put me off the movie. The "grindhouse" aesthetic isn't one I was raised on, and it's not for me.

Another problem is that Rodriguez sets up potentially great moments and then proceeds to fluff them. Don Johnson's Von is a loathsome villain, and you can't wait to see him get his, but when he does it's thrown away in a matter of obscure frames, whereas meaningless henchman are dispatched in loving detail. Similarly, Steven Seagal's demise is rendered laughable, both by performance and direction.

He's also forgotten how to do the wonderful action that made him to begin with. Gone is the smooth cutting, on come very distracting dissolves and shot changes that render two moments - April's revenge and Luz's reveal - complete duds.

It's fun seeing some of the actors do their stuff - Jeff Fahey looks and sounds great in particular, and Michelle Rodriguez seemingly finds the role she was born for, only to have the film flub it for her - and Trejo is a great leading presence. But it's all so horribly pointless, and you can't help but think the cast and filmmakers could be using their time to do something much better instead.

What are we left with? Will Once Upon A Time In Mexico really be Rodriguez's best self-penned movie? It's not amazing, but it flows better than the others. At this point, his best works appear to be From Dusk Till Dawn and the excellent The Faculty - both with outside writers and the second notably a hire job (or at least a favour for Harvey and Bob). He should perhaps take a break, look at his ideas, and then find some better writers to make them work before he goes to the floor.