Machete

Danny Trejo, Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, Michelle Rodriquez

While Danny Trejo’s name is not as well known as Tom Hanks, George Clooney or Leonardo DiCaprio, his pockmarked, mustached face is. Since 1985, he has been in over 180 films. In 2002 alone, he appeared in nine movies. He has made a career out of playing bad guys and maybe the reason he is so good at playing such parts is that he is legitimately a tough man. Danny Trejo’s story is so amazing that not even the best scriptwriter in Hollywood could create it. He went from going nowhere fast to being the hardest-working man in Tinsel town.

Danny Trejo grew up in San Fernando Valley of Las Angeles. A petty criminal and drug addict before he was a teenager. As Danny noted, “Juvenile hall, youth authorities ... I was in a lot of trouble. I grew up like the characters I've been playing. But would I do things differently? I honestly believe that circumstances create destiny, almost. There weren't too many ways I could have done things. The only things that were available to me were either be a laborer or be a drug dealer. So I became an armed robber. It was a lot simpler.” In and out of prison throughout his youth, before he was even out of his twenties he had done time in every major prison in California. During this time, on the streets and in jail, Trejo learned to use his fists. He was so good that while serving time at San Quentin he became the California state champion in both the lightweight and welterweight classes. Yet, Trejo knew that his lifestyle of drugs and violence was either going to kill him or make him a lifer. It was after a prison riot where a man was killed and Trejo and several others were thrown into solitary confinement that the future actor asked God for help. He successfully cleaned himself up through a 12-step program for drugs and by keeping his nose clean was able to be back on the streets by his late thirties.

Fate stepped in and gave Trejo an E ticket to success in 1985. Trying to stay on the straight and narrow, Danny was extremely active in the recovery movement. One of the young men he befriended was in the movie industry. Feeling that he was going to fall off the wagon, the young man gave the former ex-con a call and Danny told him he would meet him at the set of a movie called Runaway Train. Little did Trejo know but a former prison mate, writer Edward Bunker, who had done time for armed robbery, had penned the script. Recognizing his old friend and remembering that the studio was looking to find someone to teach star Eric Roberts how to box like a convict for his role, Bunker offered Danny $350 a day to train the actor. When offered the job, the former convict did not quite understand what they wanted him to do, asking “How bad do you want this kid beat up?” After things were explained to him, Bunker worried that Danny might beat Roberts to death if the young thespian accidentally tagged him a few times. The Mexican-American tough man replied, “For $350 a day, give him a bat. I used to get beat up for free.” Director Andrei Konchalovsky saw the con hanging around the set and thought he was an actor. The more he looked at him the more he thought that Trejo would be perfect for a small role in the film as a convict. So, he walked up to the man who had served time in Folsom, Tracy, Soledad, and San Quentin and ask, “Can you act like a convict.” Danny laughingly remembers replying, “I’ll give it a shot.”

The $50 a day job on the set of Runaway Train was the beginning of a long and successful career for Danny Trejo. Soon he quickly became known as the man to bring in when a casting director or executive needed a bad guy who looked like a convict. As Trejo recalls, “I did a sh!t-load of B-movies about prisons. They would always say, 'Get that Mexican guy with the big tattoo.' I'd show up and I'd have one line, like, 'Kill 'em all!' or something.” Yet after a few years he had established quite a resume – Death Wish 4, Bulletproof, Whore, Lonely Hearts, 12:01, and “Baywatch.” And that might have been Danny Trejo’s career playing the thug in B-level and straight to video flicks but fate was not done tangoing with him. His second cousin was a young filmmaker named Richard Rodriguez who was doing a big budget English version remake of his indie hit El Mariachi called Desperado. Not only did he become a regular cast member in Rodriquez’s films, appearing in From Dusk to Dawn, the Spy Kids franchise, Once Upon A Time in Mexico, Grindhouse, and Predators, but he began turning up in more mainstream films like Heat, The Salton Sea, Con Air, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The Replacement Killers, Reindeer Games, and Bubble Boy. Yet, Machete might be the first time a phony movie trailer has inspired a real movie to be made. As part of Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse, homage to exploitation cinema, between their two films they film several phony movie trailers. In fact, for many critics and audience members, the faux trailers were the best part of the movie. Two of them it was decided later should be real movie, Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving and Rodriguez’s Machete.

Like most of Richard Rodriquez’s pictures, Machete was shot for a relatively small budget, $25 million. Machete (Trejo) is a Federale officer named Cruz, whose nickname is Machete, due to his penchant for using knives with long blades. The movie opens up like a bad 1980s Sylvester Stallone movie with Cruz storming into a hostage situation to save a damsel in distress. Why? Because he is MACHETE! Let the slicing and dicing begin. Sly’s Cobra might have his pistols and Arnold, his muscles, but Machete is a walking Cuisinart. He slices. He dices. He chops. He is Machete. One little problem, it is a set up. He is literally stabbed in the back. Who is the bad guy behind it all? Torrez. (Steven Seagal, yes, that is right, law man, reincarnation of a holy man, wife beater, accused of white slavery, full blooming crazy Steven Seagal. Rodriquez is signaling to put the cheese factor on full.) Cruz is dead or is he?

Cut to three years later, Machete is alive and working as a day laborer. How is that possible? He is MACHETE! He is friends with Luz (Michelle “I think I need a drink and where are my keys” Rodriquez), who owns a Taco Truck and has her own fun time with meat cleavers. A local businessman named Michael Benz (Jeff Fahey) tries to hires Machete for $150,000 to assassinate corrupt Senator McLaughlin (Robert DeNiro) who is deporting thousands of illegal aliens. Think a redneck male Sarah Palin, but with the ability to form a grammatically correct sentence. Yet, it is a double cross… but they did not count on MACHETE!

So is it good? It is a movie about a large Mexican with big knives. Chop, chop, chop. How is Don Johnson, Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Alba, Cheech Marin, and Trejo’s acting? Let me repeat. It is a flick involving a man who uses machetes. Cut, cut, cut, whack, whack, whack. Does the plot make sense? Pay attention… Very menacing man, blades so big, Ron Popeil would make an infomercial about him. He stabs. He slashes. He pierces. Wait, there is more. Should I see this film? Okay, Einstein, Large, large, large knives, campy actors, over the top plot, hack, hack, hack. If this sounds fun to you, then this is your kind of film. It is supposed to be one of those “it is so bad it is good” films. All I know is I like Danny Trejo.

Verdict: Huge Blades, Violence, Camp, Nonsense Plot, Cool.