"Machete" Gets Better

Much like the recently discussed Hobo With A Shotgun, the film Machete, which is slated for a September 3rd release, started as a faux-trailer in the Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino collab Grindhouse.  Rodriguez wrote and co-directed the feature length Machete (A third phony trailer is being turned into a movie with Eli Roth doing a Thanksgiving feature.)  Ironically it seems the fake trailers from Grindhouse might spawn better films then the movie they we're originally created for.   For the campy, fun-looking Machete, Rodriguez has assembled a great cast.  In the title role is the incomparable Danny Trejo whose face has so much character in it they really don't need to create any back story for him.  Trejo will be supported by an amazing and eclectic cast. Joining him are Michelle Rodriguez, Robert De Niro, Steven Segal, Jeff Fahey, Lindsay Lohan, a long awaited 'Nash Bridges' reunion with Cheech Marin and Don Johnson together again, and, finally, the lovely Miss Jessica Alba. The original trailer as it appeared in Grindhouse - without much of the great cast listed above - already had won me over with it's over-the-top violence, Cheech Marin as a gun-toting priest and the brilliant voice over line "They just fucked with the wrong Mexican," but today I learned something that has me really psyched about this flick.  Alba will play twin sisters in this movie.   Two Jessica Alba's. Twin Jessica Alba's! That sounds absolutely fantastic.

Alba recently spoke with MTV News about the movie  and described the film as "Robert Rodriguez, old school at its best."  As a fan of his early stuff, El Mariachi and Desperado in particular, this sounds like great news.  She went on to describe her roles in Machete: "I play identical twins.  One's bad and one's good."   Wait a second!  One of the twins she is playing is a bad twin?! Could there be a twin cat fight?  Perhaps a mud wrestling match?  This whole thing is starting to sound like a screenplay that perhaps my subconscious wrote while I was sleeping.   Jessica - who is undeniably lovely - hasn't really delivered anything cinematically that leads me to believe she's going to be a huge asset to the movie (except perhaps the poster) because, if we're being honest here, she really is just scenery that speaks.   However, that being said, the notion of two Jessica Alba's in the same movie is appealing nonetheless.   In a B-movie, where perhaps acting is secondary to say, looking good on the back of a motorcycle or firing a machine gun, Jessica Alba could be a Meryl Streep-esque kind of commodity.  And this flick has two of them!  Alba recently discussed the movie at the Tribeca Film Festival and revealed that her character (without clarifying which one, the bad girl or the good one) had a love scene with star Danny Trejo.  Check out a clip of Alba discussing Machete below (after a brief, but annoying ad.)

Now, keep in mind that Machete is a grindhouse B-movie genre flick where sleaziness is part of the charm.  I think - maybe I hope? -  there's a very good chance that both of Alba's characters will be involved in this love scene.   This might be film history as we will see our first threesome with one actress playing two of the participants.  (Did Dead Ringers have a threesome with two Jeremy Irons?  I think maybe it did.)  Something tells me that a scene as crazy as that would be right up Robert Rodriguez's alley.   Sadly, this speculation is just wishful thinking.  If Jessica Alba performed in such a scene there's no way the film could be in post production now without  it having been leaked long ago.  In fact, a project like this is such a geek magnet that I suspect the screenplay was read and reviewed online before the casting was even done.  But when I'm daydreaming about a movie with two Jessica Alba's, I'm prone to flights of fancy.  Check out the original trailer below to get an idea of what a no-holds barred crazy flick this will be and decide for yourself if both Alba's in a sexual tryst seems out of place in this flick.