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I saw Machete. I'm having a hard time marshaling my thoughts because I have so many of them. Indeed, the thing that fascinated me was how complex my intellectual response was to something, which on its surface looks to be designed for a more visceral response, but really isn't. That is to say, it is clearly designed to do that, to play on multiple levels simultaneously, to engage heart and mind, and guts all at once, and if you are gynaphilic, I'm guessing gonads. Dude! just Dude! There is so much going on in this movie all at once, wbut if you don't want to engage it like that, I'm sure you could just ride the adrenaline. It's scary clever, really, and is very much of a piece with a bunch I'm guessing you won't. There's quite a bit of the ultraviolence here, so if you can't handle that, this is likely a bad choice. It's got a lot of references and in-jokes for people who are into film history or the sort of films that influenced Mr. Rodriguez, but you don't need to know all that stuff for a lot of the emotion and humor to work, I think. The movie is talking about film making and story telling, mostly in subtext, but again, that doesn't have to be your thing for this to work. There's a lot of political things and social things, but if that isn't your deal, you can just focus on the action film and the fact that Danny Trejo is having a rip roaring time playing with his image, along with the likes of the Divine Mr. Savini, Cheech Moran, Jessica Alba,Michelle Rodriguez, Robert De niro, and Lindsey Lohan. It is irritating that Mr. Seagal is in this, but his part is blessedly small, and he's playing an a*****e, which helps. Seriously, I could tell people were just having a great time with this movie, and the self mockery is charming. I really liked the way a lot of the bit characters seemed to have depth to them, appropriate for a movie starring a character actor. I particularly liked that the body guards had different personalities and hints at back story. It was a hell of a lot of fun, and I really do wish Mr. Trejo the best with this, as there's not much glory in character acting, so it's just heartwarming to see him getting the spotlight for once.
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