RIP Michael Clarke Duncan

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Turbo: OK, That's a Knife.



Coming of age in the nineties means I grew up on some pretty gritty, independent movies. Flicks like Desperado, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, From Dusk 'till Dawn, and other such wonderful homages to ridiculous carnage. One of the men behind that was Mr. Robert Rodriguez. If you're unfamiliar with Machete, it originated as a phony trailer in the double feature Grindhouse films. From there, Rodriguez ran with the idea and came up with a chilling tale of a modern Mexican anti-hero.

Yet, I had some beef with the first movie. Not gonna lie.

My name is Tom McLaughlin. The villain in the movie is named Jon McLaughlin. It was just a little difficult for me to root against him. But that's all the personal bias I had...really.

The real problem I had was the message. It was frightening, in a lot of ways. I'm against the whole Minutemen situation entirely and think there's a much better way to handle all of this, because whatever we're doing isn't working for a whole shitload of reasons. However, the message leaned a little too much in the direction of revolution against the USA. It might not have been the intention, I won't say it was, but that's what I picked up from it. Still, it was also so badass and just too silly to be taken seriously anyway.


And awesome.


So why not a Machete 2?

The first was an excellent example of a profitable Grindhouse production and it's been a while since we had a good Mexican action hero. Danny Trejo has what Robert Rodriguez calls a "face for HD", with all the scars and wrinkles the man lives and breathes in without make-up. If he were living on the streets, you'd think he was a drunk bum, but put a big fuckin' knife in his hand and have him fight for freedom, and you have yourself a god damn action star.

If anything, this flick is going to just be fun to watch.

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