Merrick here...
The folks over at Titan Books have an updated and expanded edition of SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL. This is a revisitation of a fine and interesting title by long-time friend of AICN, Vern. The publication exactly what the title portends, and a whole lotta fun.
BELOW: an excerpt from this new issuance, which is now available HERE. You can also learn more about the title over at Titan's site, HERE.
Thanks to Titan for providing this excerpt, which focuses on Seagal's appearance in Robert Rodriguez's MACHETE (2101).
Enjoy!
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CHAPTER 34:
MACHETE
“But you went for the honor, bandejo. And I went for the power.
We killed a lot of bad guys together. Now I’m the bad guy.”
In 2009, Sylvester Stallone began casting for an ensemble action movie called The Expendables. The actor and Academy Award-nominated writer would direct, co-write and star as the leader of a team of mercenaries on a mission in a fictional South American country. What would make it unusual would be an all-star cast of tough guy actors (and non-actors) from across the spectrum of testosterone-laden movies and sports. Although there were iconic faces from modern action movies (Jason Statham), Hong Kong martial arts cinema (Jet Li), professional wrestling (Steve Austin) and mixed martial arts (Randy Couture), it was the legendary action stars of the ’80s and ’90s that drew the most attention: Stallone, his Rocky IV opponent Dolph Lundgren, the cameos by Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. With supporting roles for Mickey Rourke, Eric Roberts and Gary Daniels, the movie began to be seen as a sort of action dream team and a tribute to our love for the so-called has-beens that people like us want to see on the big screen again, kicking ass. At a press conference in Brazil during the first week of shooting Stallone described it as “a 1980s movie with today’s technology.”
But not every beloved action hero of the era made it into the movie. Jean-Claude Van Damme, for example, was offered a role and turned it down. Various reasons were rumored (not enough of a character, didn’t want to lose to Jet Li, needed to concentrate on the editing of The Eagle Path). What’s known for sure is that he spent that time filming Universal Soldier: Regeneration, honestly a far better movie than The Expendables. (Lundgren has a smaller role so that he could film both.)
Seagal also turned down a part in the movie, but his reason seemed clearer: The Expendables was produced by Avi Lerner, head of Nu Image. Seagal and Lerner had sued and counter-sued each other in disputes involving the filming of Today You Die and Mercenary For Justice. “There’s too much bad blood between them,” a source close to Seagal said at the time.(1)
Although Stallone’s finished film was a mixed bag weakened by fairly incoherent action, it was a thrill to see that group of legends together. It would’ve been nice to see Seagal taking his rightful place alongside them on the big screen. Since The Expendables was rated-R, aimed specifically at a male demographic and starred mostly actors considered past their prime by the superficial entertainment press, some were surprised by its success — it made nearly $275 million worldwide according to boxofficemojo.com. An immediate Expendables Effect began, with DTV producers scrambling to cast b-action icons to fight each other, or comparing their casts to The Expendables as soon as they got Christopher Lambert or somebody signed on. And it may have thrown down the gauntlet for some directors to try to put together an even more eclectic cast. At least it seems that way with Robert Rodriguez.(2)
Seagal’s Marked For Death and Urban Justice co-star Danny Trejo had been reported early on to have been cast in The Expendables,(3) but he denied it: “Stallone said I was in The Expendables so he could raise his money, you know what I mean? Because I bring in the Latin audience. So I was in The Expendables all the way up until the time they started casting. I’m not in The Expendables.”(4)
Stallone might not understand the value of Trejo beyond financing, but Rodriguez — who funded his 1993 $7,000 debut El Mariachi partly by volunteering for medical experiments, then went on to build his own state of the art studio and digital effects company in Austin where he creates major motion pictures like Sin City and Planet Terror — does. He’s put Trejo in almost all of his movies, even the Spy Kids series. As producer of the Predator sequel Predators, Rodriguez put Trejo in an eclectic team of monster fighters that included Academy Award-winner Adrien Brody, UFC 6 champion Oleg Taktarov, Matrix guru Laurence Fishburne, The Shield and Justified standout Walton Goggins, Redbelt’s Alice Braga, and, uh, Topher Grace. But of course our subject here is the movie Rodriguez shot in the two months before Predators, the one where Trejo plays the title character, Machete.
Machete had been one of Rodriguez’s dream projects since he first worked with Trejo on Desperado and thought, “This guy should be like the Mexican Jean-Claude Van Damme or Charles Bronson, putting out a movie every year, and his name should be Machete.”(5) When he needed some fake movie trailers for the Grindhouse double feature in 2007, Rodriguez recruited Trejo to shoot scenes of a story about a knife-wielding Mexican day laborer who’s hired for an assassination, is betrayed, and goes for revenge. The trailer turned out so good they immediately made plans to expand it into an actual movie. Trejo and the trailer’s villain, the great b-movie star Jeff Fahey (Darkman III: Die Darkman Die), joined Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, Michelle Rodriguez, Lindsay Lohan, Cheech Marin, Don Johnson, Tom Savini, Daryl Sabara and of course Seagal in one of the weirdest ensembles in memory.
“Very much like The Expendables, it was almost a throwback to the old school action movies that are just visceral, straight-up cathartic experiences for an audience,” Rodriguez told Collider. “It’s the kind of movie that they first fell in love with when they went to see movies as kids. That’s what people tapped into and made them want to come be a part of it.”(6)
Seagal plays Torrez, the ex-federale Mexican drug lord who kills Machete’s family in the opening scene and comes to Texas to duel him at the end. In between he pops up occasionally as your standard out-of-town overseer villain, sitting by his pool, surrounded by subservient women, video chatting with his underlings from his laptop. In total his screen time is only about 8 minutes, but he makes more of an impression than he did in the nearly 20 he had in Against the Dark.
This is partly because of the novelty of Seagal-as-villain. In a way it’s just a slight readjustment from his usual screen persona, a re-contextualization that shows you the overlap between his look and that of a sleazy action movie villain. Somehow it fits perfectly. His characters can obviously be brutal, and even criminal. This one just goes too far over the line into evil. His sadism is aimed in the wrong direction. But he’s still a disillusioned former agent, still has much younger girlfriends, still gets to use an on-again-off-again accent and mix in some Spanish, still gets to do aikido and even a samurai sword. (No guitar, though.)
When he says, “You never knew how to stay down, puñeta. So I guess I have to teach you,” it wouldn’t have to be a villain saying it, although he does deliver it with a little more menace than usual. I can also imagine him saying, “Back the fuck up and watch!” as a good guy, but it wouldn’t be to a hostage he just untied.
Seagal always says how much he loves catching bad guys, but he seems to be having a blast playing one. As a first time villain he happily collects his “Just how evil is he?” cruelty-to-women scene, caressing the face of a naked girl who did “excellente” work setting up Machete, then not wincing as his henchwoman shoots her in the head. While the movie is a little jokier than I would prefer, Seagal plays his part completely straight, sometimes to intentionally humorous effect. He’s slightly more dedicated to the accent than in other movies, but they don’t play it up by giving him a mustache or anything goofy like that. Honestly his Mexican portrayal isn’t any more ridiculous than when he’s done Russian or southern accents.
The most Seagalian touch is Torrez’s unexplained fascination with ancient Japanese traditions. The samurai sword is his weapon of choice, he talks about honorable beheading, and it even ties in to his inevitable death in the climactic showdown. Even more than in Executive Decision we know that Seagal’s supporting role means his character will die, and he finds a unique way to do this without diminishing his value as an onscreen badass. After being impaled on Machete’s namesake, Torrez takes a moment to assess the damage, then he calmly observes, “You know, I could kill you right now very easily. Believe me, this is nothing. This ain’t shit. But… I know you’ll just be waiting for me in hell. So… I think I’ll say goodbye. Fuck it.” And he kneels down and finishes the job, using the machete to commit seppuku.
Seagal’s acting here is perfect. He’s not just trying to save face by claiming he could win. He really believes it. I don’t know how many more death scenes he’ll get to do in his career, but I doubt he’ll have any as cool as that.
I like Machete. I think Trejo could pull off a sincere Van Damme or Bronson style movie and I’d like that better, but the cartoonish, tongue-partially-in-cheek version is enjoyable too. It could stand to have more focus on the title character, and (like The Expendables) the chaotic final battle is not staged as clearly as it ought to be. But it’s a uniquely awesome character in a world that celebrates absurd violence and reclaims and glorifies Latin stereotypes like blaxploitation films did for black culture. The heroes are illegal immigrants, underclass workers and revolutionaries working out of a taco truck; the villains are rich politicians and criminals exploiting racism to build a border fence that would give them complete control of the drug trade.
Despite his rugged looks and fugitive status Machete is a smooth operator who lays four different young, beautiful women. He’s also a killer of Jason Voorhees proportions who stabs people, beheads people, even disembowels a guy and uses his long intestine to rappel out the window and into the floor below. The story has some unusual twists on genre formula, my favorite being that when he’s framed it’s for a crime he didn’t commit yet. He’d accepted the money and fully intended to assassinate the guy.
Machete has plenty in common with Seagal’s characters. In the prologue to Marked For Death, Seagal faced Trejo while on a DEA mission in Colombia; in Machete it’s Trejo facing Seagal in Mexico. While still in uniform, Machete sports long hair, following the Seagal tradition of unorthodox cop fashion. Once he becomes a disillusioned ex-cop and freelancer he does a lot of things we’ve seen in Seagal movies. He’s paid by a questionable figure to perform an assassination (Pistol Whipped), he’s hospitalized and has to recover to get revenge on a corrupt senator (Hard to Kill), he works with a Catholic priest (Above the Law), he fights a guy he knew from the old days (Above the Law, Under Siege), he stabs a guy with a corkscrew (Out For Justice), he enjoys younger women and dodging punches (various).
He also gets his own “Just how badass is he?” when the sniper played by Shea Whigham reads his file and says, “CIA, FBI, DEA all rolled in one mean fucking burrito.” But the ultimate endorsement comes from Seagal-as-Torrez, who gets to say that Machete is “Notoriously hard to kill. Trust me. I’ve tried.”
In the months before Machete was released, Seagal became involved in yet another new arena: the Ulitmate Fighting Championship. Middleweight champion Anderson Silva recruited Seagal to help with his training for an upcoming title defense at UFC 117, and their relationship became a major point of discussion after UFC 126 when Silva knocked out Vitor Belfort with a front kick. Through a translator at the post-fight press conference Silva said, “Steven Seagal helped me perfect that kick. That was a kick we were working on before I stepped in.” (7)
The plot thickened a few months later at UFC 129 when Lyoto Machida, who had also been training with Seagal, won his fight by front-kick knockout. “I feel very good because I trained it a lot, this kick,” said Machida. “My dad taught me, Mr. Steven Seagal taught me also.” (8)
Although in both cases it was the fighters themselves that credited Seagal, others were skeptical and accused Seagal of taking credit for a basic move. On Twitter after the Silva-Belfort fight for example, ex-UFC heavyweight champion Bas Rutten wrote, “He taught him a front kick to the face? He invented that? Nobody else knows this kick yet? What planet does he live on?”
But the important part of the story is who Machida defeated with the controversial kick: one of the most legendary mixed martial artists of all time, Randy Couture, who had been UFC 13 tournament winner, three-time heavyweight champion, two-time light-heavyweight champion, doorman that Seagal punched out in Today You Die, and The Expendables cast member.
Seagal couldn’t be an Expendable, so as a teacher, and through mysterious and factually disputed methods, he defeated the toughest member of the Expendables. It’s classic Seagal, and classic Torrez.
Machete, 2010
Directed by Robert Rodriguez (Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn) and Ethan Maniquis (editor of various Rodriguez films).
Written by Robert Rodriguez & Álvaro Rodriguez (From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman’s Daughter).
Distinguished co-stars: Robert De Niro.
Seagal regulars: Danny Trejo (Marked For Death, Urban Justice).
Firsts: First Seagal as an evil villain (he was only an opponent in Clementine), first Seagal character committing suicide, unless you count Executive Decision.
Title refers to: Trejo’s character’s name and weapon of choice.
Just how badass is this guy? “You’re saving me from Torrez? You’ve got balls.”
Adopted culture: Seagal plays a Mexican who enjoys samurai swords and traditions.
Languages: English, Spanish.
Old friends: Torrez and Machete “used to be Federales together” and “were brothers.”
Fight in bar: No.
Broken glass: He doesn’t get a chance.
Terms of endearment: Puñeta, puto, bandejo, hermanito, cabrón.
FOOTNOTES
1 Morris, “Expendables Under Siege,” Moviehole.net, June 7, 2009
2 To be fair, Rodriguez has always had a knack for casting. He made Salma Hayek a star and gave Mickey Rourke great roles in Once Upon a Time In Mexico and Sin City before his “comeback” in The Wrestler.
3 Mayimbe, “Machete Joins The Expendables!,” Latino Review, February 17, 2009
4 Rabin, “Random Roles: Danny Trejo,” The Onion AV Club, April 28, 2010
5 Moro, “SXSW 07: Machete Movie Coming,” IGN, March 11, 2007
6 Radish, “Robert Rodriguez and Danny Trejo Interview Machete,” Collider, August 29, 2010
7 Hendricks, “Steven Seagal helped Anderson Silva with KO front kick,” Yahoo! Sports, February 6, 2010.
8 “Lyoto Machida: Steven Seagal taught me that kick,” mixedmartialarts.com, May 1, 2010.
