The Films of Quentin Tarantino: From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)

From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) 

Directed by: Robert Rodriguez.

Written by: Quentin Tarantino and Robert Kurtzman (story).

Starring: George Clooney (Seth Gecko), Quentin Tarantino (Richard Gecko), Harvey Keitel (Jacob Fuller), Juliette Lewis (Kate Fuller), Ernest Liu (Scott Fuller), Salma Hayek (Santanico Pandemonium), Cheech Marin (Border Guard / Chet Pussy / Carlos), Danny Trejo (Razor Charlie), Tom Savini (Sex Machine), Fred Williamson (Frost), Michael Parks (Texas Ranger Earl McGraw), Brenda Hillhouse (Hostage Gloria Hill), John Saxon (FBI Agent Stanley Chase), Marc Lawrence (Old Timer Motel Owner), Kelly Preston (Newscaster Kelly Houge), John Hawkes (Pete Bottoms, Liquor Store Clerk).

 

Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez are good friends, and share a lot of things in common – most notably, a love of old grindhouse films – violent, sexual, exploitation films made on the cheap. And yet, there is no doubt that as filmmakers, they have very different approaches in how they use those influences to make their films. Tarantino usually tries to elevate (I hate that word, but perhaps it fits) his influences – putting them all into the blender of his brain and coming up with something that has the DNA of all of his influences, but feels completely original – completely his own. Rodriguez is more content to try and recreate the films he loved with a DIY look and feel. You can see this in Grindhouse (which I won’t review as part of this series as it’s harder to find – and I own Tarantino’s extended cut of Death Proof – which is a better overall film) – and you can see it in From Dusk Till Dawn, a film written by Tarantino and directed by Rodriguez. For the most part, I love Tarantino’s style much more than Rodriguez’s – but here, it makes sense that Rodriguez’s approach works. From Dusk Till Dawn is pure B-movie – a guilty pleasure of a film that turns half way through from one film to another – both of them work. It’s easy to say that the first half is more Tarantino and the second more Rodriguez – and its kind of true – it’s not entirely.

 

The first scene though, is pure Tarantino. A liquor store clerk (an early role for John Hawkes, who shows how great he already was) is working when a Texas Ranger (Tarantino favorite Michael Parks) comes in. The two shoot the shit for minute upon minute – talking about nothing for much of it, but then the Ranger mentioned the Gecko brothers – one of whom broke the other out of jail, and they’ve been murdering their way South – leaving a trail of bodies in their wake on their way to the Mexican border. When the Ranger goes to the bathroom – we see that those brothers – Seth (George Clooney) and Richard (Quentin Tarantino) were there the whole time. They aren’t happy with the liquor store clerk – he was supposed to get rid of the cop ASAP – and it doesn’t seem to be going that way. They hide again when the cop comes out – but they don’t stay hidden for long – and the place erupts in violence, before it quite literally erupts.

 

That opening scene pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the Gecko brothers – both are capable of incredible violence – but Seth is more controlled and smart about it – he doesn’t want to kill everyone unless he has to. Richard’s first reaction is to always start shooting – and keep going to extreme lengths. Eventually, the pair of brothers end up kidnapping a family – father Jacob (Harvey Keitel), a pastor struggling with his faith since the death of his wife, his daughter Kate (Juliette Lewis) and teenage son Ernest (Scott Fuller) – who are driving to Mexico in a Winnebago. The Gecko’s see this as their chance to get across the border unnoticed. Once across, they plan to meet some associates at a bar called the Titty Twister – which seems like so much fun, until it becomes clear that it is really just a front for vampires – and more and more people start to die.

 

Tarantino wrote the screenplay for the film, and it does kind of feel like something he tossed off rather quickly – which perhaps it was. He wrote it at the request of Robert Kurtzman, a makeup specialist, as a kind of payment to him for working on the ear scene in Reservoir Dogs. There were times when Tarantino himself was going to direct – but he decided he wanted to concentrate on his performance as Richard – and Kurtzman himself was going to direct. But I think with Rodriguez, they landed on the right director. He does a good job in the first half – he stays out of Tarantino’s way in that opening scene (which is probably the best in the movie) and has a few nice touches (I love the way he reveals what Richard did to the hostage in the hotel room when Seth returns). But when he reaches the Titty Twister, he lets his freak flag fly – and fully embraces how insane they violence gets, while finding the right notes of humor throughout. The film here is overwritten – in the right way – he embraces it. It’s fun and insane, and he casts it well – with Tom Savini and Fred Williamson as a couple of bikers, Cheech Marin playing multiple roles, and Salma Hayek as a stripper – who pours whiskey down her leg for Tarantino to drink off her foot (which may well be something Tarantino insisted on). As a director, Tarantino could have done this sure – but Rodriguez does it better.

 

The casting of the Gecko brothers is strange. This was Clooney’s first lead role after ER made him a star. I’m not sure he’s quite right for the role – Seth is smarter and more mature than Richard, but he’s still a heartless killer. Clooney makes him likable – which works for the role – but it may have been better had he not been quite so charming. As for Tarantino, well, I think the film shows why he never had a role this big again. He’s not bad – but the role is a plum one, one that should showcase a great actor. Tarantino is fine – but imagine someone like Steve Buscemi or Michael Madsen in the role, and you have a classic. Harvey Keitel is fine as the pastor – although it kind of feels like he’s phoning this one in. Juliette Lewis is good as Kate – although I wonder if she’s slightly too old for the role, or perhaps, after Natural Born Killers this kind of innocent shtick that worked so well for her in Cape Fear, just wasn’t as genuine.

 

From Dusk Till Dawn is a fun film – a guilty pleasure. As a teenager, I saw it probably about 10 times – but I haven’t felt the need to revisit it probably since 2000 or so. Watching it now is somewhat nostalgic – not just because I loved it as a teenager, but also because it’s a reminder of the type of film that used to be in multiplexes in the late 1990s, that don’t really exist anymore. If he had started making films then, S. Craig Zahler (Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in Cell Block 99 and the upcoming Dragged Across Concrete) would have been a mainstream director – now he’s essentially an arthouse director. I miss those days. Watching this film today, I don’t love it the way I did as a teenager – but I still had a great time watching it. It’s fun, B-movie, grindhouse tribute. The type of film Rodriguez does well, and type of film that Tarantino normally would have done something more with. He doesn’t here – and that’s fine. The film works as is.

The Films of Quentin Tarantino: Four Rooms (1995)

Four Rooms (1995) 

Directed by: Allison Anders (The Missing Ingredient), Alexandre Rockwell (The Wrong Man), Robert Rodriguez (The Misbehavers), Quentin Tarantino (The Man from Hollywood). 

Written by: Allison Anders (The Missing Ingredient), Alexandre Rockwell (The Wrong Man), Robert Rodriguez (The Misbehavers), Quentin Tarantino (The Man from Hollywood).

Starring: Tim Roth (Ted the Bellhop), Valeria Golino (Athenaq), Madonna (Elspeth), Alicia Witt (Kiva), Sammi Davis (Jezebel), Lili Taylor (Raven), Ione Skye (Eva), Amanda de Cadenet (Diana), David Proval (Siegfried), Jennifer Beals (Angela), Lawrence Bender (Long Hair Yuppie Scum), Paul Skemp (Real Theodore), Antonio Banderas (Husband), Tamlyn Tomita (Wife), Lana McKissack (Sarah), Danny Verduzco (Juancho), Patricia Vonne (Corpse), Salma Hayek (TV Dancing Girl), Kathy Griffin (Betty), Marisa Tomei (Margaret), Julie McClean (Left Redhead), Laura Rush (Right Redhead), Quentin Tarantino (Chester Rush), Jennifer Beals (Angela), Paul Calderón (Norman), Bruce Willis (Leo).

 

The year was 1995, and Quentin Tarantino was the hottest director in Hollywood, coming off the massive success of Pulp Fiction, and he was also a celebrity – something rare for directors. Everyone wanted to see what Tarantino was going to do next. What Tarantino seemed to want to do was act. This was the year of his starring role in the all but forgotten Destiny Turns on the Radio. And it was the year of Four Rooms – in which Tarantino teamed up with three of his friends, all indie darlings, to make the anthology film Four Rooms. The idea was simple – each director would tell a story, set in a Hollywood hotel room on New Year’s Eve – the connective tissue would be Ted the Bellhop (Tim Roth) – the only employee working that night – who would undergo a series of comic misadventures. The four directors were all coming off of indie successes in 1992– Allison Anders had Gas Food Lodging, Alexandre Rockwell had In the Soup, Robert Rodriguez had El Mariachi and Tarantino, of course, had Reservoir Dogs. They assembled an amazing ensemble cast. What could possibly go wrong?

 

Well, everything it turns out. Four Rooms is not mentioned a lot these days – and there is a reason. It was a critical and commercial failure, and while nothing would give me more pleasure than to say that its actually an underrated masterpiece, the simple truth is that it isn’t. It’s a bad film. The first two segments don’t really work at all, the third segment is actually pretty good, and the fourth segment (Tarantino’s) feels like something the talented filmmaker threw together at the last minute. I will be shocked if Four Rooms doesn’t remain the worst film Tarantino ever had a hand in directing.

 

Tim Roth is a fine actor – he has been great in everything else Tarantino has cast him in, and to be fair, I don’t really think it’s his fault that Four Rooms is so bad. This is a broad comedic performance where Roth seems to be trying to channel Jerry Lewis at times, Peter Sellers at others, but basically it amounts to a lot of mugging for the camera, and silly walks. He only really gets going in Rodriguez’s segment – the best in the film – and in part it’s because you see what the performance could have been had the other directors allowed more Tim Roth to come through in his performance. It’s still a broadly comic turn in that segment – but it’s one where you can see the real Roth coming through. He gives it his all though from start to finish – you have to give him that.

 

The real reason the film doesn’t work, is that three of the four directors seem to basically be phoning it in a little – that they are working in a genre that they don’t quite understand, and haven’t figured out. And perhaps because they only have to make one quarter of a 98-minute film, they basically make one joke shorts, but the jokes are bad, and they still run out of steam, even before they begin.

 

The first segment, by Alison Anders, may be the worst. In it, a Coven of witches are gathering in the Honeymoon Suite – which has a cauldron in the middle of the floor for some reason - apparently so they can revive one of their own – a witch turns into stone 40 years ago in this very hotel room. Each of the large group of witches – playing by Madonna, Valeria Golina, Alicia Witt, Lili Taylor, Amanda de Cadenet and Ione Skye – were supposed to bring a single ingredient from the position, but Ione Skye messed up bringing the semen (the single best part of this segment is their initial rhyming chant as they cast their spell, which ends with Skye’s hilarious confession to what happened). So they need semen fast – and of course, Ted the Bellhop is right there. I think a big part of the problem here is that this is a short with way too many characters – you probably won’t even remember all their names by the time the segment is over, and apart from Taylor (who I found very amusing in her few line readings) and Skye – who I think is quite funny – the rest of the actresses don’t really do very much, or imbue their characters with anything. Skye and Roth really do seem to be giving it their all, but it’s a comedy that doesn’t seem to go anywhere, and doesn’t have much of a point.

 

The same could be said for Alexandre Rockwell’s segment which comes next – in which Ted is called to the room 404 by a drunken idiot (producer Lawrence Bender, once again playing Long Haired Yuppie Scum) who gets the room wrong. What he walks into instead of Jennifer Beals tied to a chair, and her husband (David Proval) waving a big gun around accusing her of infidelity – with Ted the Bellhop of course, because he’s there. Because Beals spends the first half bound and gagged, much of the segment is a lot of Proval being threatening and Roth stammering out his innocence. Proval, as an actor, can be very threatening – but here, he doesn’t find the right note – he goes too big, and he isn’t scary at all. There is a nice shot of Roth as he tries to escape through a bathroom window – but other than that, this is a one joke segment about this strange psycho-sexual game this couple is playing – and it’s not really funny.

 

The one segment that actually works quite well is Robert Rodriguez’s. Antonio Banderas gives the best performance in the movie by a mile, as a Mexican tough guy who leaves Ted in charge of his two kids as he and his wife go to a New Year’s party. The kids basically keep themselves into more and more trouble, and Ted becomes increasingly flustered in trying to deal with them – all leading to the hilarious finale, which involves fire, pornography, a hypodermic needle and a corpse. Rodriguez is the only director here who actually builds and builds and builds the comic momentum. He’s also the only one who really allows Roth to play a real character – Roth on the phone at the end is clearly his best moment in the film. Rodriguez works wonders here – and it’s downright hilarious, all the more so given everything around it. While the rest of the directors would probably like to forget Four Rooms, this actually ranks as one of the best things Rodriguez has ever directed.

 

Then we get to Tarantino’s segment, where director himself plays a Hollywood star, having himself a drunken New Year’s with a couple of friends (Paul Calderon and Bruce Willis) – and have been joined by Jennifer Beals from the second segment. They decided they wanted to recreate an old Alfred Hitchcock episode – where Steve McQueen bets Peter Lorre that he can light his cigarette lighter 10 times in a row – if he does, he’ll get Lorre’s car. If he doesn’t, Lorre gets to cut off his pinky finger. But everyone is drunk, so they want Ted to the be the hatchet man as it were. The best decision Tarantino makes is to satirize himself – making himself the big headed, preening star. Tarantino is not a great actor – but he’s an okay one, and playing an exaggerated version of himself, he’s pretty good. And yet, everything about this segment feels more like someone trying to ape Tarantino than Tarantino himself. The dialogue is just not quite to the level of Tarantino’s other films – and when that happens, the dialogue rings false more often. The direction isn’t great either – okay, the final moments are great – but for the most part, this feels like something Tarantino did on the fly. It’s better than the first two segments – but it’s still very weak by Tarantino standards.

 

I have never quite figured out why anthology films like this very rarely work. The idea seems simple – get together a group of talented directors, and let them play on a theme. But at best, these movies end up giving us one good segment, and a forgettable rest. And that’s a shame, because the best of these deserve to be seen, but the worst usually make people less interested in the whole. New York Stories has a great Scorsese movie, a horrible Francis Ford Coppola movie, and a forgettable Woody Allen film – and as a result, how many people have ever seen the great Scorsese segment. The same is true here – the Rodriguez movie is wonderful – and the rest, not so much.

Movie Review: Alita: Battle Angel

Alita: Battle Angel ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Robert Rodriguez.

Written by: James Cameron and Laeta Kalogridis and Robert Rodriguez based on the graphic novel series by Yukito Kishiro.

Starring: Rosa Salazar (Alita), Christoph Waltz (Dr. Dyson Ido), Mahershala Ali (Vector), Jennifer Connelly (Chiren), Ed Skrein (Zapan), Keean Johnson (Hugo), Eiza González (Nyssiana), Lana Condor (Koyomi), Jackie Earle Haley (Grewishka), Michelle Rodriguez (Gelda), Casper Van Dien (Amok).

 

Alita: Battle Angel is a movie that tries to cram so much into its two-hour runtime that it almost cannot help that the film feels confused and disjointed at times. Perhaps that also has to do with the fact that you have two competing filmmakers competing from control here – as you can tell the guiding hand of James Cameron is behind the film somewhere (he has had the rights for years, and never did anything with them) – and he’s now the co-writer and producer of the movie. But the film was directed by Robert Rodriguez, who as he often does, shows a great hand here directing action sequences, but never seems to quite get the storytelling clear. The film is never boring – it races headlong into one sequence after another, and once the action starts, you never have to wait too long for another action sequence. But the film almost has the opposite problem of all those Netflix Marvel shows – which always feel to me like a feature film stretched into 13 hours. This feels like the first season of a TV show condensed into two hours.

 

The film is set 300 years after “The Fall” – a war of sorts that have left the have up in Zalem – a floating city above the earth – and the rest of humanity in Iron City on the ground – who are all essentially poor working stiffs, doing everything to support Zalem. On the scrap heap from above, Dr. Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz) finds part of the body of a young, female cyborg who remarkably has her human brain still intact. He brings her home, fits her with the body he made for his now dead teenage daughter, and brings her back to life. He names her Alita (Rosa Salazar). While Alita was manufactured to be a weapon, she doesn’t remember her previous life (at least at first – like every person with amnesia in movie history, it will come back to her in conveniently timed flashes throughout the film). When she wakes up, she is essentially a naïve, teenage girl, who has to relearn about the world. She quickly falls in love with Hugo (Keean Johnson) – and draws the attention of some bad people like Vector (Mahershala Ali) – the representative of Zalem in Iron City, and his underling Chiren (Jennifer Connelly) – Dr. Ido’s ex-wife – who desperately wants to return to Zalem. There’s also other cyborgs known as Hunter Killers – basically bounty hunters – who want to track her down. Oh, and there’s a sport called Monster Ball (I think) – which is basically a deadly form Rollerball from those movies.

 

All of this – and more – is crammed into the movie that ultimately cannot sustain itself. One of the best things the movie has to offer is Rosa Salazar’s motion captured performance as Alita. She is good as this naïve girl, who becomes a battle tested warrior – and even when she makes some weird decision, you are fully on her side. The screenplay though is a little confused and retrograde. While the film clearly wants to be seen as some feminist girl power, its character dynamics seem backwards. The relationship between Alita and Ido is creepy in a way that the movie never comments on. The relationship between Alita and Hugo never really gels in a way to make you believe that Alita would do what she does (and offers to do) – mainly because Hugo is a bit of a creep himself. When Alita has her adolescent body destroyed, and gets a new one – one with Nano-technology that will adapt itself into her own self-image, the self-image she apparently has is a kick ass Barbie Doll – skinnier waste, large breasts, etc. – which warrants a single one-liner from Ido’s nurse about how she’s “grown up” and then not mentioned again. Talented actors like Jennifer Connelly and Mahershala Ali are completely wasted. Ed Skrein is better suited for his bad guy role, but it’s rather one note. There are plot threads and characters that clearly exist in this movie only to setup the sequel we are unlikely to see– like Michelle Rodriguez seen in flashback, and the actor who plays Nova (who I won’t name) – who doesn’t say a word, and appears at the end.

 

And yet, the action sequences when they come really are something. Yes, they are more CGI soup that I often complain about in superhero movies – but here, it’s distinctive CGI soup. Rodriguez has always known how to direct an action sequence – and there are several here as good as we’re likely to see this year. The film is incredibly violent – but mostly in a bloodless way – as Alita hacks, slashes, and smashes her way through her enemies. There is a sense once she gets her new body that she is completely indestructible – which doesn’t help things (if you don’t believe she can die, who cares?) – but Rodriguez stages the scenes with so much pizazz you likely don’t care.

 

I cannot help but wonder though that if Cameron had made the film itself would it have been better. For as much crap as he takes (some of it, to be fair, deserved) – he has made the type of relationships that ring false here work in the past. He has made his tin eared dialogue sound okay, at least in context. And he has never met a three-hour runtime he didn’t love – which may have given this film more of a chance to breath and develop things better.

 

Overall then, Alita: Battle Angel is a mixed bag. You won’t be bored by it – that’s for sure. But it won’t ever quite grab you the way it should – the way James Cameron’s films usually do, and the best of Robert Rodriguez’s films can do. It’s an odd film – but not really a successful one.

Movie Review: Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
Directed by: Robert Rodriguez & Frank Miller.   
Written by: Frank Miller based on his graphic novels.
Starring: Mickey Rourke (Marv), Jessica Alba (Nancy), Josh Brolin (Dwight), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Johnny), Rosario Dawson (Gail), Bruce Willis (Hartigan), Eva Green (Ava), Powers Boothe (Senator Roark), Dennis Haysbert (Manute), Ray Liotta (Joey), Christopher Meloni (Mort), Jeremy Piven (Bob), Christopher Lloyd (Kroenig), Jaime King (Goldie / Wendy), Juno Temple (Sally), Stacy Keach (Wallenquist), Marton Csokas (Damien Lord), Jude Ciccolella (Lt. Liebowitz), Jamie Chung (Miho), Julia Garner (Marcie), Lady Gaga (Bertha), Alexa PenaVega (Gilda).

I was a fan of Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s Sin City back in 2005. It felt new and different – and an interesting way to adapt the graphic novels by Miller – which I had bought, and enjoyed leading up to the movie. In the years since, more and more directors have done something similar to what Rodriguez and Miller did in Sin City, with increasingly poor results. I hadn`t thought about Sin City for a while – except for whenever there was an update on the long rumored sequel, that I had believed would never actually be made. When they finally officially announced it, I was still looking forward to the movie. Over the weekend before watching Sin City: A Dame to Kill, I went back and re-read the Miller graphic novels, and re-watched the original movie for the first time in years. While I don’t think either the graphic novels or the original movie are as good as I once did – I think they are both still very good, entertaining and somewhat unique. So despite some rather harsh reviews, I was still looking forward to the sequel. Unfortunately, the sequel doesn’t live up to either the graphic novels or the original movie. There is a numbing sameness to the movie – and everyone seems to be on autopilot.

The movie adapts one of the graphic novels and another of the shorts comics that Miller originally wrote, and then two new stories that were never published as graphic novels. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the two adapted from the original comics are the better of the four segments. The film opens with Just Another Saturday Night, a short, about Mickey Rourke’s brute Marv who discovers he`s been shot, and doesn’t quite remember what happened, so he slowly pieces together what happened. It`s a short, brutal, violent way to start the movie – but it works, for the most part. The other decent segment is the one that gives the movie its title – A Dame to Kill For – where Josh Brolin plays a pre-surgery Dwight (he was played by Clive Owen in the original film, but had gone through extensive plastic surgery, so it makes sense he`s played by a different actor this time). Brolin, unfortunately, is one of those actors on autopilot – he basically looks pissed off the whole segment, as he narrates the story of his old love Ava (Eva Green) coming back into his life, and completely ruining it. Ava is a typical Miller female character – basically a heartless femme fatale who would make Barbara Stanwyck blush – and she spends almost the entire segment naked, or nearly so. But she`s the one actor with a large role in the movie who seems to fully buy in, and she does a great job as a femme fatale. As she did in the unnecessary 300: Rise of an Empire (also affiliated with Miller) this year, she elevates an unnecessary sequel every time she`s onscreen – so much so that she makes almost everyone else in the film look bad.

The two original stories do not really add anything new to Sin City. In one, Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Johnny – a gambler who never loses, who has his sights set on the ever powerful Senator Roark (Powers Boothe). He wants to humiliate Roark, for personal reasons that eventually become clear. Gordon-Levitt is a fine actor, and he has already proven he handle noir dialogue in Brick, but here he is pretty much indistinguishable from the other male heroes in Sin City – who are basically as violent as the male villains, but have some sort of code. The second original story, which is intercut with the Gordon-Levitt segment, is about Nancy (Jessica Alba) – the stripper from the first movie, still in love with Hartigan (Bruce Willis) – the cop who saved her and then committed suicide to protect her (Willis shows up here, as a ghost – and I kept waiting for him to talk to Haley Joel Osment). Nancy has gone on a downward spiral, and also has her sights set on Roark – the man whose son Hartigan had to save her from twice. Alba has never been the best actress, but as in the first film, she`s a hell of a dancer, and she leaves an impression when she`s on stage – when she`s off though, she doesn’t make Nancy`s fall all that convincing – and that`s necessary, since Nancy was always the one ray of hope in the series that had none. Her downfall makes a dark series darker – yet the movie fails to make that hit as hard as it should.

Rodriguez and Miller basically shoot the movie exactly the same way they shot the original Sin City – but this time in 3-D. On the 3-D, I cannot say that I really even noticed it – even the usual complaint I have about 3-D that it makes everything unnecessarily dark, didn’t happen this time, since the majority of the film is in black and white anyway. But I don’t see much of a point in the 3-D either – it may not detract from the film, but it doesn’t add much either. I will say I still do like the overall visual look of Sin City though – with its dark black, bright whites and bold streaks of color. It looks like a film noir on crack, which is what they are going for.

But the visuals cannot save Sin City: A Dame to Kill For from being a rather dull exercise. This is a movie full of beheadings, gunfights, fist fights, a crazy doctor played by Christopher Lloyd, a heavily made up grotesque Stacy Keach and a lot of beautiful naked or nearly naked women – and yet for the most part, I was bored watching film. It doesn’t have the sense of danger the first film had and the series has lost the power to shock and surprise. It isn’t horrible film – but it is an unnecessary one.

Movie Review: Machete

Machete ***
Directed by: Robert Rodriguez & Ethan Maniquis.
Written By: Robert Rodriguez & Álvaro Rodríguez.
Starring: Danny Trejo (Machete), Robert De Niro (Senator McLaughlin), Jessica Alba (Sartana), Steven Seagal (Torrez), Michelle Rodriguez (Luz), Jeff Fahey (Booth), Cheech Marin (Padr), Don Johnson (Lt. Stillman), Shea Whigham (Sniper), Lindsay Lohan (April), Daryl Sabara (Julio).

Some people never really grow up. I think Robert Rodriguez is one of those people. He made his debut film, El Mariachi way back in 1992 and the only thing that has really changed in the 18 years since then is that he now has more money to make his movies. Unlike his friend and fellow class of ’92 director Quentin Tarantino, he has never really grown as a filmmaker - he has fun making his tribute to the B movies of the past. Not that there is anything wrong with that - because Rodriguez does that better than just about anyone else.

His latest film is Machete, which is based on the trailer he made when he teamed up with Tarantino to make Grindhouse. It stars Danny Trejo as a Mexican Federale whose family is killed in front of him by the evil drug kingpin Torrez (Steven Seagal). A year later, he is living in Texas illegally and works as a day laborer. He is approached by Booth (Jeff Fahey) with a job offer. He will get $150,000 if he assassinates State Senator McLaughlin (Robert DeNiro), a racist, anti-immigration man who wants to build an electrified fence across the border. Machete agrees, gives to the money to Luz (Michelle Rodriguez), who runs something called the Network, which helps Mexicans cross the border and start a new life together. But he is double crossed, the assassination botched and he becomes the most wanted man in Texas. Immigration officer Sartana (Jessica Alba) tracks him down, but believes his story, and instead of bringing him in, decides to help him. His revelations have far reaching implications as it reveals a huge conspiracy.

Much like Grindhouse, Machete plays well as a tongue and cheek parody of the exploitation films of the 1960s and 70s. The film is extremely violent - from its opening action sequence where Machete goes on a solo mission after Torrez and ends up hacking about a dozen people with his machete - complete with limbs and heads flying all over the place, and torrents of blood splattering the walls all over the place. Rodriguez is wonderful at staging these scenes of ultra violence - and considering that there are rarely 5 minutes in a row without one of these scenes, the movie remains entertaining throughout. Another thing that helps is the performances. Danny Trejo has been in pretty much every Rodriguez movie in a supporting role, but given the lead here, he does precisely what he is asked to do. He isn’t going to win an Oscar for it or anything, but he has the right style for this role. He doesn’t take it seriously, yet he has a perfect deadpan style that makes his lines hilarious. Yet he isn’t half as good as Robert DeNiro who is pretty much perfect as he goes completely over the top as the Senator with the put on Texas accent and swagger. DeNiro has often phoned in his performances in the last decade, and while this certainly isn’t going to let him regain any of his prestige, he certainly does seem to give it his all in this film. The rest of the cast is fine - Jessica Alba and Michelle Rodriguez both play tough, sexy women, and do their job fine, Lindsay Lohan is pretty damn good as a slut who for reasons I will allow you to discover ends up packing a gun and dressed as a nun, and Don Johnson as a vigilante who has taken it upon himself to patrol the border is fine as well. Acting in a movie like this has to be kind of difficult, because you have to both be in on the joke, but not go too far with it. The cast here strikes a fine balance between those two extremes.

Machete isn’t a great movie. It is trash, pure and simple. But it is a movie that knows it is trash, and wants to be nothing more than that. There is something refreshing about that. When I watched Grindhouse, I enjoyed Rodriguez’s segment, Planet Terror, while it was playing, but after Tarantino’s Death Proof started, the Rodriguez film went out of my memory. Here, not teamed up with Tarantino, it allows Machete to breathe a little more. While Rodriguez will probably never be the filmmaker people thought he could be when he made his debut, I think he’s okay with that. And as long as he continues to make films as entertaining as Machete, so I am I.