Machete Script Revealed

A few things to keep in mind before you go on ‘head and read a summary of Robert Rodriguez’s MACHETE script: The movie clocks in at a slim, trim 90 minutes and the scripts itself is 87 pages. It is about a man who slices people with a machete. Therefore, one can safely assume that the vast majority of the movie will concern itself with showing a man slicing things up with a machete.

So, onward. And please note that this post will contain MASSIVE. SPOILERS. OBVIOUSLY.

• The movie starts out with Machete while he is still a federal officer, albeit one who favors slicing motherfuckers up with a staple remover (No. With a machete. STAPLE REMOVER is the sequel.) over shooting them with a gun or tasering them in a YouTube video. He gets called to deal with a kidnapping at a hotel, where, without waiting for backup to arrive, he swoops in and finds The Girl. As they run to safety, he looks down and discovers he’s been machete’d - by The Girl! His fellow officers show up and order The Girl to kill him. Machete gets cut into MACNUGGETS and is left inside the burning (yeah, burning) hotel to die.
• But he isn’t dead. Of course. How he survived being eviscerated and charred is never explained, which reminds us of being young and becoming frustrated with Wile E. Coyote. Three years after being left in the hotel, Machete is working as a day laborer. He tried making do as an insurance agent, but he could not deal with Cathy, the office manager. What a ball buster. He eventually meets Elektra Rivers, a homeland security officer who, in a very realistic touch, is slim and hot and wants your sex. He also meets Luz, a taco truck owner who helps Machete kill some would-be muggers with a meat cleaver. Avoid this particular taco truck.
• A man named Booth eventually approaches Machete and asks him to kill a senator for $150,000. It is explained that the senator uses illegal Mexican immigrants to build a wall along the border before sending them back whence they came. Machete agrees to kill him, but is shot by a sniper in the process. He is injured, but relatively ok. He is perhaps a little bit miffed that people keep trying to kill him. And will become more miffed when he discovers Booth has ordered all the killing types to do away with Machete.
• Elektra catches up to Machete, hears his story, and decides she’d like nothing more than to sit on his blade, so to speak. The rest of the movie follows the two as they stop and chop.

If you’ve noticed any gaping flaws in logic at work here, you might be able to assuage your worries with the fact that this film is supposed to parody Grindhouse fare. That doesn’t necessarily make it worth watching, and it won’t necessarily mean it’s a particularly successful or necessary parody, but there you go. If a movie is set on the premise that the brutal, mindless killing and exploitation of women and minorities found in grindhouse movies is over-the-top and ridiculous, does portraying these without nuance or commentary do anything to make the satire any different from the source? (For the record, we greatly enjoyed Planet Terror despite recognizing its many flaws. Death Proof was a shitfest with a fun premise.)

And, because the director, main characters and certain major plot points (we’re being generous) are either Latino or deal with Latino immigration, it’s fair to ask what this movie has to say about what it means to be Latino, and immigrant, and marginalized. Do people keep wanting to kill Machete just because he’s Latino? Does he feel any particular connection to the fact that the Senator is exploiting Mexican immigrants, or is he just in it for the money and the thrill? And why would audiences feel compelled to root for an underdog who happens to be a psychotic mass murderer?

If Rodriguez and Tarantino’s Grindhouse double feature is any indication, MACHETE will prove to be mostly ignored by audiences, and mostly panned by critics. Which is a shame, because it could have provided a chance to bring something new to the table where “Latino movies” are concerned. 

Exclusive: A Look At The MACHETE Script! [Latino Review]