Monday, September 6, 2010

MACHETE

Review: Machete
3.5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

Although the basis for “Machete” is in fact an idea concocted by writer/director Robert Rodriguez in the early 1990s, one could say this Tex-Mex tale of bloody vigilantism is the first movie based on a phony trailer. And if it's not, it's surely the most popular. The public got its first taste of “Machete” in 2007, when it debuted as one of the soaringly over-the-top intermission attractions of “Grindhouse,” Rodriguez's and Quentin Tarantino's hyper-stylized, cigarette-burned, midnight-madness double feature. The three-minute clip became a sensation, and it was only a matter of time before the title character, an illegal immigrant and former Mexican Federale out for vengeance and justice, finally got his own full-length película. Starring 66-year-old Danny Trejo, the career tough guy with the bullet-ridden complexion who's played countless supporting roles and appeared in many Rodriguez productions, the expanded “Machete” offers oodles of the tongue-in-cheek, blade-in-belly excess its core audience expects, but some key things have been lost in the stretching, adequate control being one of them.


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