Back in 2007, BFF film directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez had an idea to recreate the B movie films of their childhoods for a modern audience. Their finished product was Grindhouse, a project with each director creating their own film and giving a total run time of around three hour with a very 70’s feel.
Unfortunately, it went down the pan. Critics weren’t a fan of Tarantino’s contribution, Death Proof, the tale of a stunt driver that gets thrills out of killing women with his stunt car. However Rodriguez’s effort in Planet Terror won slightly more favourable reviews in his modern day telling of military biological warfare chemicals turning the population of a small Texan town into what we masses know and love as zombies.
In the ‘interval’ period between the films, faux trailers were produced to keep in style with the Grindhouse B movie motif. One of these trailers was an idea from Rodriguez himself. It was called Machete and the premise was simple, a Mexican day labourer is picked up to kill a US senator but is set up, shot and arrested. Only after he escapes do the men who hired him realise he was a Mexican Federale as he sets about dispatching the people who set him up.
The cherry on top of the already gratuitously violent trailer was the tagline for the film “They fucked with the wrong Mexican”. Some taglines give an idea of how a film will play out with subtle patience, perfect timings and unforeseen twists. Rodriguez’s does none of these; it simple sets the trailer up as an over the top revenge film.
Years later and after much fan based internet discussion and the cancellation of his adaption of Barbarella, Rodriguez announced he was turning his two minute trailer into a full film. The fan boys went wild and on the 5th May 2010 there patience and appetites were satisfied with a REAL trailer for the REAL film from what was originally filler material, destined to the confines of DVD extras.
On first viewing it looks as if Machete will be able to right the wrongs of Once Upon A Time In Mexico.
While bulk of the initial footage looks as if they are material from the filming of the original trailer, the new footage and cast list is something else to behold. When Robert De Niro appears as the US senator at the centre of Machete’s mission, the flood gates open on the impressively wide choice of actors for this film. How many films see Lindsey Lohan as a gun wielding socialite, Steven Seagal as a machete swinging drug lord and Rodriguez regular Cheech Marin as a dual shotgun wielding priest?
While this new film promises action by the bucket load, its squeaky clean overtone makes it feel less special than the faux trailer.
Machete promises by all viewing accounts and Youtube comments of “This is so fucking bad ass words cannot describe AT ALL” to be one of Rodriguez’s most entertaining films.
Yet the original faux trailer seems more favourable than the newest release. Was it because it had golden ideas as a holy priest Cheech Marin locking and loading two shotguns to the sound of an angelic choir? Could it have been the panicked businessman who hired Machete questioning the whereabouts of his wife and daughter only to then cut to a scene of Machete cavorting with both, topless, in a swimming pool? Maybe. Was it because of the last shot of Machete riding a motorbike with a mini gun attached on the front, firing away as an explosion rears up its destructively warm orange face? Oh hells yes.
While the clips of Cheech Marin and the motorcycle made it into the newest trailer, it looks to shiny and too perfect compared to the damaged and worn feel of the original.
However these are just miniscule little hiccups from the mind of someone who holds the original trailer on a pedestal of incredibly high expectation.
Machete looks to be a film made for devoted Rodriguez fans first and foremost. To other members of the masses not so well versed in the works of Robert Rodriguez, it will be a revenge flick with balls to the wall action, a star studded cast and machetes so sod off huge they look like they could skin a crocodile
With Machete set for a September release date in the States, it can only be hoped it finds its way quickly and without fucking with the wrong Mexicans en route.
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