It was also great to see long-time character actor Danny Trejo in a leading role, opposed to the standard gang member/henchman roles he normally plays. Instead, the film was more akin to Rodriguez’s past Mexican-centric action efforts El Mariachi and Desperado, which was fine by me, as I am a big fan of those films as well.
Surprisingly, the film was not as much of a throwback to exploitation films of the 1970’s as many were expecting.
In many respects Machete delivered on the over-the-top action, violence and tongue-in-cheek political satire hinted at in the original trailer. From the first announcement that the film was a go to the seemingly weekly updates of new cast members, my anticipation was palpable. It was hard not to get excited about Robert Rodriguez’s full-length versio n of his awesome Machete trailer from 2007’s Grindhouse. Well, in Stienbaur’s search to track down the reclusive “Winnebago Man” behind the clip, Jack Rebney, he uncovers a lot of truths about modern media, life, friendship and regret and proves there’s a little “Winnebago Man” in all of us. At first, you wonder how a 4-minute YouTube clip of outtakes from a Winnebago sales video, in which an angry salesman messes up and curses up a storm, could translate into a full-length documentary. There we re a lot of great documentaries released in 2010 ( Exit Through the Gift Shop, Americ a n Grindhouse, The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia, etc) the one that I found the most entertaining and (surprisingly) the most touching was Ben Stienbauer’s Winnebago Man. I had a lot of fun with this in the theater and it makes an enjoyable rental for sci-fi fans desperately seeking original material. While this certainly isn’t a perfect film (the wheels kind of start falling off the last 20 minutes), I think Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley deliver good performances as the two genetic engineers/lovers who test the limits of science and ethics, and the creature effects on Dren (the human/animal hybrid monster they create) are fantastic. I think that’s why Vicenzo Natali’s Splice was such a welcomed addition to the genre when it was released this summer. Sadly, with Hollywood’s recent addiction to mindless re-makes and adaptations, there has been a severe shortage of good, original, sci-fi/horror lately. Scientifi c experiments gone awry, researchers pushing the boundaries of science with horrific results, these things have been the cornerstones of good sci-fi/horror flicks for decades. I love science fiction horror, especially with an emphasis on the science part.
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