Machete

Impressions before seeing it
I thought it was a cool idea to take one of the fake movie trailers from Grindhouse and turn it into a real movie, and as a part of that genre I knew it would be fun.

How was it?
Technically, Machete is a bad movie. The plot is dumb, some of the acting is cheesy, and the action is unrealistic to the point of being cartoonish. Does that matter? Not in this case. Planet Terror - and to a lesser extent, Death Proof - also had these qualities, and those movies were just as fun. It's all intentional and meant in a "wink-wink, let's laugh about this crazy 70's genre" way that only enhances the enjoyment factor. It edges on parody and can be considered part comedy, though there's also plenty of unnecessarily explicit violence and a bit of nudity. To me, this is a good excuse to make bad movies. There are plenty of terrible blockbusters out there with no excuse for their schlock, but if your movie is not going to be good, why not do it in a way that makes it look as if it's bad on purpose? It may not have been intentional in the 70's, but that is the grind house's purpose today.

One thing that bothered me, though, is that I feel like movies shot in this style may as well be set in the 70's, but Planet Terror and Machete are not, as they include modern technology like text messaging and video chat. It took me out of the movie when Booth (Jeff Fahey) and Torrez (Steven Seagal) were seen, through slight film grain, talking on their laptops. It just doesn't fit when the rest of the movie more or less feels like it could have come from the 70's. But on the flipside, the best thing about this movie is the violence. Twisted and sometimes funny, my favourites include a scene where Machete, in the back of a cop car, impales the driver with his blade and then steers from the back seat by twisting the blade back and forth; and another where he rips out a dude's large intestine and uses it to rappel out the window of a building and into the window of the floor below. As you can see, it's completely ridiculous, but that's the point, and it's all in good fun. And on a neat little side note, you can find replicas (or maybe it's the same footage, I'm not sure) of the shots seen in the original Machete trailer from Grindhouse, making it even more retroactively authentic.

Recommendation
If you don't "get" these types of movies where everything is over the top and intentionally cheesy then you probably won't enjoy this (I suppose it can be called "Mexploitation", being about Mexicans). But I think you'll like it if you liked Grindhouse, or just love a lot of crazy, mindless violence. I had fun with it, because that's all you can do.