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Posts: 4813
Sep 7 10 9:48 AM
There's nothing genuinely political in this movie by ccr1633 4 days ago (Thu Sep 2 2010 13:31:27) Let's get real. Rodriguez is a devoted fan of the sort of 70s revenge flicks he grew up with at drive-ins. The Machete character is just an exaggerated channeling of Charles Bronson in Mr Majestyk, your classic kick ass blue collar guy who has been wronged by authorities and various underworld power brokers, who seeks bloody revenge because of it. The underlying theme about slighted immigrants is just an excuse to build scenes of glorious violence around something that could be construed as a "story." It's really incidental in my opinion. If Rodriguez could bring Charles Bronson back from the dead he would've made Charlie his star. Absent that possibility, he chose the next-best chiseled leatherface with ambiguous ethnicity on the block, Danny Trejo, and hence this film. Remember, Machete gets pissed because he is double-crossed, not because he had a particular axe to grind with the US government!
Exactly. Aside from that little mock trailer that was posted on Youtube addressing the recent legislation in Arizona (which was filmed after the movie), Machete is less a political statement and more a throwback/homage to 70s exploitation flicks. It's all in good fun.