
At the start of Machete, we see Machete (Danny Trejo) working as a Federale in Mexico. Evil drug kingpin Torrez (Steven Seagal, Mexican villain with a samurai sword) kills Machete's family and leaves him to die in a burning building. We then jump ahead three years, and Machete is now an illegal alien and day laborer in America. He's hired to kill someone, gets framed for attempted murder, and... it's payback time!
The plot isn't as important as the bad guys and good guys. The villains, all intertwined in a plot involving murder, corruption, and a giant electrified border fence between Mexico and Texas, include: the aforementioned Torrez; Booth (Jeff Fahey), a scheming businessman who set up Machete; Senator McLaughlin (Robert DeNiro), campaigning against immigrants; and Lt. Stillman (Don Johnson), a vigilante border patrol leader.

Machete began as a fake trailer between the features in Grindhouse, and it both has and lacks the excesses of the original: Machete has no annoying deliberate missing scenes or scratchy film, but it also lacks its own wild trailers for other fake films (that apparently can get made). Machete also has amazingly over-the-top characters, the sort of caricatures that were popular in the original grindhouse flicks. Machete glowers through the movie, killing villains in gory and creative ways, gettin' down with just about every woman he meets (always to the same porno music), and inspiring all Latinos and Latinas to unite! The female stars all beauties who kick ass, the villains do everything from shoot pregnant women to lust after their daughters, and the body count just rises and rises.

Overall grade: B
Reviewed by James Lynch
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