It really did begin as a
joke -- when
Robert Rodriguez and
Quentin Tarantino collaborated on shock-thrill-gore-fest
Grindhouse in 2007, each included a collection of fake
trailers for other films, titles such as "
Werewolf Women of the SS" and "
Hobo With a Shotgun." Rodriguez included in his group a mock-trailer for a film idea he'd had in his pocket for years:
Machete, a star vehicle for
Danny Trejo as "Machete Cortez," a
Mexican Federale who comes to the US as an illegal immigrant worker, but ends up hired to
assassinate a virulently anti-immigrant
Senator. But the whole assassination is a
Machiavellian set-up (designed to boost the Senator's profile), and it is Trejo who winds up shot, left for dead, and -- once recovered -- on the
anti-heroic
rampage for
revenge. The fake trailer generated such delight that the project got greenlit as a real movie, and Trejo comes back for the full-length role, as does
Cheech Marin (who appeared in the trailer as a
shotgun-wielding
priest who is apparently Machete's brother).
The real film, shot late in 2009 for a September 2010 release, boasts some other notable Latino stars, including
Michelle Rodriguez (who appears at one point sporting an eyepatch and a pair of heavy duty handguns) and
Jessica Alba (initially on the side of deporting illegals in the name of the law, but by the end,
fist in the air, exhorting a
crowd "we didn't cross the
border, the border crossed us!!"). And, it also includes a
cowboy-hatted
Robert DeNiro as the targeted xenophobic politico, and turns by
Lindsay Lohan,
Don Johnson as a sheriff, and, for his first role in quite a while,
Steven Seagal (who engages in a machete-fight with Machete;
tip: never fight a person using a
weapon that is also their name). The Don Johnson turn should be a particularly interesting one, as he's clearly a
bad guy here.... but still a
lawman as he was in
Miami Vice,
Dead Bang (but did anyone
see that flick?) and
Nash Bridges -- which also starred Cheech -- so who wants to place
odds that this
character gets his
comeuppance at the hands of Cheech's priest?
One really funny aspect of this whole project is, it is not Rodriguez' first
silver screen use of the Machete character, played by Trejo; in all three
Spy Kids flicks, Rodriguez used the character (and
actor) in a minor part, as an
uncle of the title kids. Probably that coincidence will have to be written off as happening in an
alternative universe, for the world of Spy Kids is not so
bloody and gruesome as Machete's world (although it is, naturally, far more technologically advanced, if harmlessly so).