HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — He looked like just another day laborer from the streets, and the perfect fall guy for a crooked political assassination. But he turned out to be Machete, a legendary ex-Federale with a deadly attitude and the skills to match.
Left for dead after clashing with notorious Mexican drug kingpin Torrez, Machete has escaped to Texas, looking to disappear and forget his tragic past. But what he finds is a web of corruption and deceit that leaves a bullet in a senator and Machete a wanted man.
Machete sets out to clear his name and expose a deep conspiracy. But standing in his way are Booth, a ruthless businessman with an endless payroll of killers; Von, a twisted border vigilante leading a small army; and Sartana, a beautiful immigrations officer torn between enforcing the law and doing what is right.
Helping Machete even the odds are Luz, a sexy taco-truck lady with a rebellious spirit and revolutionary heart, and Padre, a priest who’s good with blessings, but better with guns. Carving a path of bullets, blood, and broken hearts, Machete’s quest ultimately leads him back to Torrez for an epic battle of revenge and redemption. Or as Machete puts it: “They just f****d with the wrong Mexican.”
View: Machete Premiere Red Carpet Photos
While most movie fans believe Machete was born in a now-legendary “fake” trailer conceived by Robert Rodriguez as part of his and Quentin Tarantino’s tribute to B-movies, Grindhouse, Machete’s inception dates back years before that film’s 2007 release. In the early-1990s, when Rodriguez was prepping his second motion picture Desperado, he thought the time was right for a Latin movie hero, which he codenamed Machete.
“There weren’t any action movies that with a Latin flavor that could play to a broad audience,” Rodriguez explains. “When I watched [director] John Woo’s movies, they made me want to be Asian. Woo and [actor] Chow Yun-Fat’s Hard Boiled and The Killer really inspired me to make films that would create that feeling in the Latin arena.”
The nascent idea for Machete began to crystallize when actor Danny Trejo reported to the set of Desperado, which was shooting in a small Mexican town. “Nobody really knew about Desperado, yet the local townspeople would flock to see Danny, thinking he was the star of the movie, even though his part was very small,” Rodriguez remembers. “He has incredible presence, and I knew I had found Machete. So, I handed him a knife, and told him to start practicing.”
Since that fateful meeting, Trejo has acted in several of Rodriguez’s movies, including From Dusk Till Dawn and Spy Kids. “I continue to work with Danny because he pops and has one of the most amazing faces in cinema history.”
When the fake Machete trailer was unveiled in Grindhouse, the response was impressive. “People [who had seen the trailer on Grindhouse or, later, online] would come up to me and ask, ‘Are you going to make that movie?’” Rodriguez notes. “And I would respond, ‘Yeah, of course we’re going to make it’ – although I really had no firm plans to do so, because I didn’t want to let them down. They were genuinely excited to see the entire film be made.”
Trejo’s ongoing passion for a Machete feature film also had a significant impact on the filmmaker. “Danny would talk about doing a Machete movie for years,” says Rodriguez. “So when we made the trailer for Grindhouse, I figured that would maybe be enough to satisfy our need to make the full film.” But the trailer triggered even more enthusiasm for a feature. “Danny continued to call me, saying, ‘Well, now we really have to make the movie because everyone wants it.’ So my phone would not stop ringing for two years until I finally broke down and said, ‘Okay, we’re going to give the fans what they want, and Danny what he wants. And I knew of course that I more than anyone wanted to see this movie finally get made. Machete’s time had finally come.”
Like Rodriguez, Trejo was inspired by people’s enthusiasm for a Machete movie. “The fans were everywhere,” Trejo says. “When I was in England a few years ago, I was stopped by two guys who had tattoos of the character Machete on their backs. When I signed my name [above their tattoos], they had my signature tattooed, as well.”
Machete is driven by vengeance, and that says Trejo, “makes him one bad m*****r.” Indeed, Trejo’s sharp-edged instincts and passion for the film and character – his first starring role in a career that spans a quarter of a century – has him sometimes even sounding like his onscreen persona: “Machete is a man of very few words but when he does say something, someone’s gonna die!”
As a youngster, Machete lived a hard life on the mean streets of Mexico. He was accepted at the police academy, where he excelled, and as a Federale, Machete was, as one character in the film describes, “CIA, FBI, and DEA all rolled into one mean burrito.” And what about that foreboding street name? Well, when a man spends his life fighting, he tends to be nicknamed after his weapon of choice. (Machete carries no fewer than 44 blades in his custom-made leather vest.)
Machete’s affinity for knives comes in handy when he makes an incredible escape from a hospital – and his looming execution. In what promises to become one of the film’s most talked-about sequences, Machete slices open an opponent’s belly and rappels down a wall with the goon’s intestine. Is the sequence over-the-top? Sure. But as Rodriguez reminds us, “The intestine is ten times longer than the human body. True fact.”
Portraying an inventive, knife-wielding character in a Robert Rodriguez film is nothing new for Trejo. “Every character I play has some kind of knife or sharp object,” says the actor.
Adds Rodriguez: “In Desperado, Danny was called ‘Navajas,’ which means knives; in From Dusk Till Dawn he was ‘Razor Charlie’ and in Predators he was ‘Cuchillo’ [another Spanish word for “knife”]. So, Danny’s like a whole set of cutlery in and of himself.”
Finally committing to Machete feature film, Rodriguez honed the screenplay with co-writer Alvaro Rodriguez, brought in Ethan Maniquis as co-director, and began casting. In short order, Robert came up with one of the most eclectic line-ups in recent motion picture history. Joining Trejo is action icon Steven Seagal, Avatar and Fast and Furious heroine Michelle Rodriguez, Lost’s Jeff Fahey (who also had a role in Grindhouse – and in the original Machete trailer), comedy legend and Rodriguez film stalwart Cheech Marin (From Dusk Till Dawn), actor/singer/tabloid headliner Lindsay Lohan, Miami Vice topliner Don Johnson (the veteran film and television actor gets an “introducing” credit), popular leading lady Jessica Alba (Sin City) – and the renowned Robert De Niro.
Rodriguez admits this is an unexpected ensemble: “The cast may have sounded bizarre to some people when first announced. But when you watch Machete, you see that the actors fit their roles very well. The eclectic mix really works.”
The casting also reflected a kind of “Six Degrees of Danny Trejo” situation. “Danny’s worked in hundreds of movies and probably worked with everyone in Machete at some point,” Rodriguez laughs. “Everyone just loves Danny and appreciated the fact he was finally getting to be the star of his own film. I remember Robert De Niro, who worked with Danny in Heat, telling him that, “[Machete] is going to be really good for you.”
Rodriguez also credits De Niro’s participation as a key draw for the other cast members. “From the point you get Robert De Niro in your movie, all the other actors come running.” De Niro and Rodriguez had mutual friends and collaborators – including Quentin Tarantino and George Clooney – and the Oscar-winning actor, who co-heads Tribeca Films, was interested in checking out Rodriguez’s operations at his Austin-based Troublemaker Studios.
De Niro found much to enjoy in his Machete role, as Texas State Senator McLaughlin, an immigration hardliner who forms an unholy alliance with a brutal minuteman and a shady corporate opportunist. “What I liked about McLaughlin is that you can’t take him seriously,” De Niro explains. “McLaughlin lives in the real world, but he’s kind of a mythical figure way out on the fringe. I really appreciated Robert [Rodriguez]’s sense of humor and irony with the character.”
Johnson is Von – he has no last name – a take-no-prisoners minuteman who serves as a tour guide to McLaughlin during a horrific border hunt. “Von is basically the devil,” says Johnson, who, several years ago had cast Rodriguez as a commercials director in an episode of Johnson’s popular Nash Bridges series. “Von wants to stop – with extreme prejudice – anyone crossing the border. Yet we find that he’s actually driven by greed.”
A villainous figure that Machete crosses swords – literally – is Torrez, a drug cartel chief who’s even more powerful than the politicians ostensibly manipulating the events that trigger Machete’s unstoppable vengeance. Action hero icon Seagal portrays Torrez, the actor’s first villainous role. As a master of the martial art Aikido, Seagal knows his way around a sword, and he worked closely with the film’s fight choreographers to get maximum impact of Torrez’s epic showdown with Machete.
Like De Niro, Seagal appreciated Machete’s bigger-than-life approach to the characters, story, and filmmaking process. “Torrez is not realistic but he’s not ridiculous, either,” Seagal points out. “He reflects Robert’s ‘super-reality’ vision – his special way of looking at images, textures and color.”
Of course, Machete also has some allies, chief among them being Michelle Rodriguez’s taco-slinging Luz and Alba’s Sartana, an agent in the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Rodriguez hints there’s a lot more than meets the eye with her role. “Luz’s blood boils when she sees injustice, and things start to change when she gets outraged. People get organized. S**t happens.”
I.C.E. Agent Sartana is initially hot on the trail of Machete, whose path of destruction grabs her attention. But as she learns more about the man – and the myth – Sartana realizes he represents more than mayhem and a trail of dead bodies. “Sartana is no pencil-pushing bureaucrat,” says Alba. “She’s tough, street-savvy and smart, and soon understands there’s a lot going on with this guy. When Sartana and Machete finally meet, all kinds of sparks are ignited.”
Machete also gets help from his brother, known simply as Padre, a priest who has much more than absolution in store for the assassins gunning for Machete. “God has mercy; I don’t,” Padre informs them before dispensing some un-holy justice. Marin, another member of Rodriguez’s informal repertory company, is the Padre.
When Machete meets Lohan’s April, the privileged daughter of a manipulative businessman named Booth, the consequences are unexpected – not the least of which has April donning a nun’s habit and wielding some powerful firearms. “April was born into a life of privilege and takes everything she has for granted,” says Lohan. “But she undergoes a big change. As an actress, I like pushing the envelope.”
April’s father, Booth, has set up Machete as part of an elaborate assassination plot. Booth is a master puppeteer who thinks he’s pulling all the strings, especially those of his would-be patsy, Machete. “But maybe Booth is in deeper than he can really handle,” offers Fahey, with more than a little understatement.
Machete isn’t Fahey’s first encounter with his on-screen alter ego Booth. A few years ago, Fahey had just wrapped a role in Rodriguez’s Planet Terror segment of Grindhouse, when he got the call to suit up for the Machete trailer. At the time, the Lost star had no idea the two-minute piece would evolve into a much-anticipated motion picture event. But he wasn’t too surprised. “Robert has an incredible vision and is very precise, and [working on his films] you feel like you’re in the middle of something both big and experiential. And that anything is possible,” states Fahey. Those intriguing possibilities include Rodriguez combining an epic action movie feel with the run-and-gun indie filmmaking brio that characterized his feature directorial debut, El Marichi.
Rodriguez explains: “Machete looks huge, but we shot it very quickly. I knew it would create a lot of the energy that we wanted to be a part of the film. We never throttled down.”
The anything-goes spirit of the production is mirrored in the film itself, which will take moviegoers – those long-awaiting a Machete feature, as well as those new to the character and his world – on a wild ride. “People haven’t seen this type of movie before, featuring a Latin hero,” says Rodriguez. And it confirmed for the filmmaker that a storyteller should “never throw away ideas, because if they’re really good, they’ll stick around and come back.”
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