All Robert Rodriguez movie aficionados, especially Mexicans, are curious to watch his new film called Machete (2010). The outcome could be skillful and memorable, or simply indigestible. In short: A churro. 

Churro is a well known, and a very popular nickname to call the B type movie in Mexico. This is an honest, direct, and easy way to categorize a flop as well. Everybody knows that churro is the Spanish snack we enjoy during breakfast with hot chocolate. Everybody loves to eat churros, but not everybody loves to watch them!

Robert Rodriguez’s idea to produce Machete came from the fake trailer made for Quentin Tarantino’s film Grindhouse (2007). In fact, Tarantino and Rodríguez, apart from working comfortably well in the film industry, both have shared a particular style of film making. Both have equally been influenced by Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns and especially by the B type motion picture. Rodriguez and Tarentino gave to the B film a sort of grace which has pleased the critics and the public as well.

Machete has several elements of the B movie produced during the eighties in Mexico. In particular, Lola The Truck Driver (1983) and The Iron Prosecutor (1983). This kind of motion picture explored the popular action movie style occurred during the Charles Bronson and Chuck Norris’s epoch. These Mexican films of the eighties, better known as Tortilla Westerns, Cabrito Westerns, or Mexplotation movies, adapted the Norris-Bronson violence approach into the border situation.

Mexplotation heroes bring forward Mexican truck drivers trained enigmatically in martial arts, and in all kind of lethal weapons; corrupt border officers, bandoleros specialized in human trafficking, fraudulent anti narcotics police and ferocious North American or Mexican mobsters, among other different folkloric characters, easily found in these movies.

The Mexplotation genre was very popular among the Mexican audience and, particularly, amid the Mexican American community. All of these movies had several sequels and were extremely profitable, but, simultaneously, were being criticized of replicating the heavy action movie style made in Hollywood as well.

Mexplotation films, apart from being a commercial success,  no one  would dare to admit that these movies had an incredible amount of artistic talent.  Robert Rodriguez did, in a certain way. He found in this kind of movies a very precise style that gives them a particular flair in Rodriguez’s own films. Even unintended humor portrayed in the Mexplotation genre is crafted and turned  into a deliberate movie joke in Rodriguez's films.

In Robert Rodriguez’s most personal work like El Mariachi (1992), Desperado (1995), Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003) and, certainly, Machete, he was influenced by the Mexplotation genre. Of course, there is Sergio Leone as presence in Rodriguez’s movies. Nonetheless, Leone’s masterpiece The Good, The Bad and The Ugly before being considered one of the most popular and well known westerns, and being praised by Time magazine as one of the 100 greatest movies of the last century,was labeled also of being an Italian churro among its peers.

Nobody is perfect and in the film industry, as we can see, perfection is always relative. Today a movie can be considered a complete disaster and tomorrow, who knows? What will be the route for Machete? A masterpiece or a churro? We will see, shortly.