So in my reviews of both the Green Hornet and Crank 2, i brought up how they both failed completely to understand revenge. There is no vengeance in these movies. Machete on the hand, well Machete understands revenge completely.
Now, the story is about Machete getting set up as a scape goat for a fake assassination to boost a racists senator's ratings. But this only happens because years earlier Steven Seagal had killed Machete's family and ruined him as a Federale. And that there is the conflict we're building up to, sure he makes Booth suffer for setting him up, but the fact that he wasn't the one that actually kills Booth doesn't matter. What does matter is that he kills Steven Seagal at the end.
There are other examples as well, April shoots the Senator for killing her father. This turns out to be a fake out, but she never finds out, and more importantly, she was such a noncharacter it doesn't matter.
Michelle Rodriguez gets to kill Von for taking her eye.
Hell, the Senator gets to kill Booth for arranging the fake assassination and ruining his life by it all being exposed.
Now if Steven Seagal had not been in this movie, and everything else played out the same, this would have been disappointing. Booth would have been his target, and Booth, as mentioned was taken out the Senator. Now Machete could go on to kill the Senator for being a racist bastard, but he has no personal ties to it at this point.
The only thing i didn't like was the ending. There's just some tacked on scenes, like the Senator not really being dead, but then poetically getting killed by his own machinations (which was nice, i will admit) and then Machete going off on his hog with stripper-cop Alba, setting up this isn't the end, more Machete stories can be told! But this of course ties into the whole grindhouse thing, so it's forgiven.
But as a serious drama (seriously!) it ends with this scene:
Machete, it just works.
There are other examples as well, April shoots the Senator for killing her father. This turns out to be a fake out, but she never finds out, and more importantly, she was such a noncharacter it doesn't matter.
Michelle Rodriguez gets to kill Von for taking her eye.
Hell, the Senator gets to kill Booth for arranging the fake assassination and ruining his life by it all being exposed.
Now if Steven Seagal had not been in this movie, and everything else played out the same, this would have been disappointing. Booth would have been his target, and Booth, as mentioned was taken out the Senator. Now Machete could go on to kill the Senator for being a racist bastard, but he has no personal ties to it at this point.
The only thing i didn't like was the ending. There's just some tacked on scenes, like the Senator not really being dead, but then poetically getting killed by his own machinations (which was nice, i will admit) and then Machete going off on his hog with stripper-cop Alba, setting up this isn't the end, more Machete stories can be told! But this of course ties into the whole grindhouse thing, so it's forgiven.
But as a serious drama (seriously!) it ends with this scene:
Machete, it just works.
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