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    Sophisticated cinema

    Robert Rodriguez gets De Niro to go Texas crazy and Jessica Alba to flash skinin Machete

    Joe Leydon
    Sep 3, 2010 | 2:26 pm
    • Lindsay Lohan is perfectly cast.
    • The women of Machete kick butt and flash skin.
    • Robert Rodriguez doesn't want you to take Machete too seriously, but he doesn'tmake it all camp either.
    • Jessica Alba
    • Jeff Fahey and Robert DeNiro
    • Michelle Rodriguez
    • Danny Trejo
    • Don Johnson
    • Cheech Marin
    • Steven Seagal

    Get a load of this: Don Johnson as a Minuteman vigilante commander who shoots first, and never asks questions at all, while hunting illegal aliens crossing the Texas-Mexico border.

    Listen to that: Jeff Fahey as a well-connected Austin businessman who insists the economy of the Lone Star State — hell, the economy of the entire United States — is built upon the backs of exploited undocumented workers.

    And check it out: Robert De Niro (yes, that Robert De Niro) as a rabidly right-wing Texas state senator who campaigns for re-election on an offer-no-amnesty, take-no-prisoners anti-immigration platform — and occasionally joins the vigilante commander for human target practice.

    Are you ready for a luridly flashy and exuberantly trashy action flick that’s certain to incense the professionally outraged at Fox News? Well, ready or not, here comes Machete, the latest attempt by Austin-based indie filmmaker Robert Rodriguez to simultaneously recycle and satirize the unhinged excesses of ‘70s exploitation movies.

    Heralded three years ago with a fake trailer in Grindhouse, a similarly ‘70s-favored remix by Rodriguez and frequent partner-in-crime Quentin Tarantino, it arrived Friday at theaters and drive-ins everywhere, exploding on screens as (to shamelessly quote my own review in the showbiz trade paper Variety) a wildly uneven and aggressively overstated mash-up of testosterone-fueled melodrama, comically exaggerated violence and babe-o-licious action femmes.

    But wait: There’s more.

    Very much in the tradition of the ‘70s exploitation movies that inspired it — like those filmed-in-the-Philippines, women-in-prison adventures that had incarcerated cuties plotting revolution when they weren’t soaping up in the shower room — Machete comes complete with an anti-establishmentarian political subtext. No, really.

    The anti-hero of the piece, Machete Cortez, played with awe-inspiring bad-assedness by craggy-faced, gravelly voiced character actor Danny Trejo, is a former Mexican Federale who fled northward after barely surviving a close encounter with Torrez (Steven Seagal), a notorious drug lord. (That Rodriguez cast a conspicuously Anglo action star as the movie’s only significant Mexican villain doubtless will be parsed for deeper meaning by those who delight in such parsing.)

    Three years later, he’s lying low in Austin, trying to maintain a low profile, when he becomes ensnared in a plot to generate votes for the right-wing senator by framing a Mexican fall guy for a staged assassination attempt.

    Machete – which Rodriguez co-directed with frequent editing collaborator Ethan Maniquis, and co-wrote with cousin Alvaro Rodriguez – is not a movie that places much stock in the value of subtlety.

    The sensationally bloody carnage is near-surreally stylized — at one point, Machete uses a bad guy’s intestines as a rappelling rope — and the obscenely funny dialogue is brazenly, almost combatively coarse. (As Machete’s brother, an impious priest, Cheech Marin intones: “I absolve you of all your sins, now get the fuck out!”)

    The panting, peek-a-boo nudity by co-stars Jessica Alba (as an ICE agent who joins forces, among other things, with Machete) and Lindsay Lohan (who plays, in a bold stroke of casting, a drugged-out, oversexed nymphet) will delight hormonally inflamed adolescent males of all ages. (As the militant leader of an underground immigrant-protection network, Michelle Rodriguez somehow manages to remain fully clothed — well, OK, almost fully clothed — without in any way diminishing her va-va-voom quotient.)

    Meanwhile, Trejo manfully maintains a straight face while enjoying the running gag that Machete is irresistible to these and all other beauties who cross his path.

    And yet, for all that, you can discern signs here and there that, while Rodriguez doesn’t intend for you take Machete too seriously, he’s often playing for keeps even while trolling for laughs.

    The slam-bang finale has something to offend everyone while depicting a battle royale between Anglo militants revved up on their own racism and Mexican day laborers who drive up in low-riders and delivery trucks, brandishing garden tools as well as heavier artillery.

    Even here, however, the xenophobic malevolence of Don Johnson’s Minuteman remains too sub-zero nasty to be dismissed as just a joke. And while Robert De Niro’s amoral politico is a live-action cartoon, it’s a surprisingly potent political cartoon: Some of his most virulent hate speech actually doesn’t sound as bad as stuff spoken by real-life figures routinely nominated by MSNBC gadfly Keith Olbermann for “Worst Person in the World.” (The senator’s name, not incidentally, is John McLaughlin — just like the former Nixon confidant and long-time TV talk show host.)

    When each of these characters is force-fed just desserts — well, the cathartic response Rodriguez elicits is something more complicated than mere amusement.

    Of course, the most laugh-out-loud hilarious thing about Machete may be the fact that it’s distributed by 20th Century Fox — another branch of the same corporation that provides steady employment for Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck and other Fox News stalwarts. That’s the sort of mondo-bizarro twist even Robert Rodriguez wouldn’t dare make up.

    A quick look at Machete:

    unspecified
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    Movie Review

    Houston native Wes Anderson shows off comedic side in The Phoenician Scheme

    Alex Bentley
    Jun 6, 2025 | 4:00 pm
    Benicio Del Toro, Mia Threapleton, and Michael Cera in The Phoenician Scheme
    Photo courtesy of TPS Productions/Focus Features
    Benicio Del Toro, Mia Threapleton, and Michael Cera in The Phoenician Scheme.

    If you were to do a poll of the best comedy filmmakers of the 21st century, writer/director Wes Anderson is not the obvious choice to come out on top, but there’s an argument to be made for him. His quirky style doesn’t yield the guffaws that more broad comedies do, but the absurd situations he creates in his films are often more consistently funny than anything else.

    Anderson’s inimitable approach is once again on full display in The Phoenician Scheme. At its center is Zsa-Zsa Gorda (Benicio Del Toro), a much-hated businessman who’s looking to complete a number of big projects in the fictional country of Phoenicia. As he seems to be the target of multiple assassination attempts, he appoints his daughter, Liesl (Mia Threapleton), as his heir to try to ensure his legacy.

    Both she and his new assistant, Bjorn (Michael Cera), accompany him around the country as he tries to enact a scheme to have others cover the bulk of the cost for the various projects. Those he attempts to convince include Phoenician Prince Farouk (Riz Ahmed), brothers Leland (Tom Hanks) and Reagan (Bryan Cranston), fellow businessman Marseille Bob (Mathieu Amalric), ship captain Marty (Jeffrey Wright), his Cousin Hilda (Scarlett Johansson), and Uncle Nubar (Benedict Cumberbatch).

    Put in Andersonian terms, the film is a mix between the madcap antics from The Grand Budapest Hotel and the impenetrable storytelling of Asteroid City. If you were to try to understand every detail of what’s going on in the story of The Phoenician Scheme, it might take three or more viewings to do so. But the film is still highly entertaining because Anderson fills its frames with his typical visual delights, great wordplay, and his particular version of slapstick.

    Much of the comedy of the film derives from Anderson inserting moments that initially come as a surprise and then utilizing them as running jokes. The film features more blood than usual for the filmmaker, but each time a character gets wounded (or worse), it gets funnier. The assassination attempts get broader as the film goes along, and the matter-of-fact way in which they’re treated by Gorda and others is also hilarious.

    Of course, Anderson is the cinephile’s comedy director, so the film is also full of high-brow things like allusions to paintings, tributes to other filmmakers, and classical music. Each time Gorda has an attempt on his life, he briefly finds himself in a version of limbo, depicted in black-and-white by Anderson. The cast of characters Gorda finds there - including Bill Murray as God - could come straight out of a 1950s Ingmar Bergman movie.

    Del Toro has delivered some great performances over the years, but this one is near the top for him. This is his second Anderson film (following The French Dispatch) and he nails the deadpan method. Also great is Cera, who uses a ridiculous accent to make a big impression. Threapleton, the daughter of Kate Winslet, makes the most of her first big film role. The list of supporting actors is too deep to properly laud everyone, but they all fit in seamlessly.

    Opinions will differ, but for this critic’s money, Anderson is at his best when he fully leans into the comedy of his films. He does just that in The Phoenician Scheme, to the point that it doesn’t matter that the story is overly complex. The combination of his eye for visual detail, a witty script, and committed performances make it a success.

    ---

    The Phoenician Scheme is now playing in theaters.

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