[8.1/10] Why do I love these nouveaux-exploitation films? I tend to enjoy realism and naturalism in my films, and yet I find it rapturous when *Machete* director Robert Rodriguez gives us an extended, blood-soaked Looney Tunes cartoon. I tend to scoff at how women are minimized and objectified in a great deal of popular film, and yet as much gratuitous nudity and cheesecake as there is in *Machete*, I can’t help but notice how much more the film’s female characters gets to do than in most flicks. And as much as consequence free violence tends to irk me, I can’t help but be thrilled and amused by Rodriguez’s buckets of blood and absurd, over-the-top hack and slash with Machete’s titular weapon of choice.

Maybe this type of film is just my “problematic fave”, something that I rationally know runs counter to my tastes and principles, but which just pushes my buttons in a way I can’t resist. The cartoonish actioner, which started life as a fake trailer before Rodriguez’s *Grindhouse* collaboration with Quentin Tarantino, has blossomed into a two-hour spectacle of the blood-soaked, brash, and bawdy, and I am unable to resist its vulgar auteurist charms.

Maybe that’s because, despite its “throw it all in the soup” approach to casting and character, *Machete* is an exploitation flick with something on its mind. As much fun as it is to see the title character use his weapons on hitmen and bodyguards and other varieties of hired goons, there’s a solid dose of social and political commentary in the film. *Machete* is, when it’s not focused on improbable deaths and explosions, an oddly timely meditation on Latino immigration to the United States.

Amid the twisty alliances of convenience and “kill your way up the chain” confrontations, *Machete* has things to say about local politicians revving up immigration fears to gain votes, Minutemen-like organizations treating desperate people like animals, class and generational divisions in the Latino community, and even how vicious cartels and drug lords on both sides of the border have overlapping interests that make for strange bedfellows. It’s all mixed with a firm dose of the silly and at times even surreal, but there’s legitimately potent material in the film centered on the “network” of recent immigrants, finding the intersection of justice and the law, and who’s really on where the real similarities and differences and shared realizations among people lie. As goofy as *Machete* is at times, it’s far from a dumb movie.

But it is a movie that has more interest in being stylish and over-the-top than maintaining any sort of tether to reality. The film follows the eponymous Machete (played by Danny Trejo), as he’s unwittingly mixed up in a far-reaching scheme involving the border and a state Senator, and seeks revenge and justice on those who crossed him and threatened innocent lives. In the process, Machete takes out goons like they’re tomato-sauce-filled mozzarella sticks, slicing and dicing his way through any number of creative, albeit crimson-filled sequences.

Part of the joke seems to be that Machete seems to barely emote when all of the film’s exaggerated events are afoot. Trejo lets his character’s actions speak louder than words, as he remains mostly stoic, but isn’t afraid to test his steely resolve with improvised, murdery-contraptions or improbable chopper-mounting gatling gun blast and explosion-powered leaps across the screen. Rodriguez’s action scene are fluid and over stylized as hell, but end up like a blood-pumping symphony of steel and sizzle. Some of it feels like empty calories, but it’s damn delicious regardless.

At the same time, Rodriguez secured a thoroughly enjoyable slate of colorful characters, from Michelle Rodriguez and Jessica Alba getting to flex their muscles a bit more despite some gratuitous shots, to Cheech Marin getting to blast bad guys and drop one-liners like an action hero, and Robert DeNiro seeming more alive and animated on screen than he had in a long long time. The cast isn’t flawless. Performers as varied as Lindsay Lohan and Steven Seagal seem some combination of overmatched or phoning it in. But for the most part, from big roles to small, the film has distinctive and memorable characters at every juncture.

What’s also impressive is how well the film follows the beats of the original trailer. While the glimpses of *Machete* we saw in *Grindhouse* seems like it could be the greatest hits montage of a whole series of exploitation flicks. But Rodriguez and company manage to cobble it together into a coherent film that not only manages to hit every note of that initial trailer, but which puts those moments together into a pretty solidly-built progression.

And yet I enjoy the moment big and small that the film’s team puts together when that semi-farcical trailer is extended to feature length. On the one hand, it is an atavistic delight to see Machete rip through his enemies like tissue paper in increasingly improbable but amusingly-constructed ways in the film’s bombastic action sequences. On the other, it’s oddly heartening to hear a random bodyguard muse about the hypocrisy of his evil boss’s stances and eventually settle on a change of heart when push comes to shove. It would be too much to call this tidal wave of blades and bosoms thoughtful, but Rodriguez isn’t scared to slow things down a little bit and in some beats that just add texture and the hint of depth to his testosterone-fueled escapade either.

Maybe that’s what makes it easier to swallow. *Machete* is arguably pretty juvenile, with its naked women, buckets of blood, and throwback one-liners and setups. And yet, Rodriguez is a master of his chosen form, not only filling his picture with sequences that are as inventive and well-constructed as they are ridiculous, but also imbuing this teenager-attracting film with bits of legitimate satire and insight that lift it above exploitation for exploitation’s sake. *Machete* is unabashedly an outsized, over-the-top movie, but it does everything with so much verve and fun and hidden depth that you can’t help appreciating almost all of the targets it swings for, even when the blood flows after it hits them.