Danny Trejo stars as Machete, an ex-Federale now living in America as an illegal alien and laborer since crimelord Torrez (Steven Seagal) murdered his family and destroyed his career several years before. When Machete is spotted kicking ass in a street fight by Michael Booth (Jeff Fahay), right hand man to Senator John McLaughlin (Robert De Niro), he decides Machete is the perfect fall guy for a scheme they are concocting. They strong-arm Machete into "assassinating" Senator McLaughlin, but he quickly realizes he's become a patsy and decides to turn the tables on them. Now that Sen. McLaughlin has "taken a bullet" for his stance against illegal aliens and his popularity is skyrocketing, all eyes are turned on Machete as the hunt begins for him.
It seems his only ally is Luz (Michelle Rodriguez), who sells tacos from her truck to the workers, but really works with the underground network to help illegal aliens get settled once they arrive in the United States. Luz takes Machete in and patches him up so he can get to the bottom of the whole plot. Machete then turns to his brother, Padre (Cheech Marin), who happens to be Michael Booth's parish priest and has a boatload of dirt on Booth, the Senator and their ties to Torrez. When Booth finds himself backed into a corner, he calls in an assassin named Osiris (Tom Savini) to finish the job and eliminate Machete, once and for all.
Watching all of this from her high and mighty perch is Immigrations Officer Sartana Rivera (Jessica Alba), who believes laws are laws and doesn't hesitate to send people of her own heritage right back to Mexico. But, when she and Machete get entangled in this plot together, she sees that not everything is so black and white. It'll take Machete, Luz, Sartana, the entire network and even Booth's own druggie daughter turned would-be nun April (Lindsay Lohan) to take down Torrez's gang and to show Sen. McLaughlin who will come out on top.
For a movie made as a joke based on a trailer from Grindhouse, its not so bad, but Machete is definitely not my favorite Robert Rodriguez film. It does have lots of really funny parts to it and I do like that the beginning of the film, showing Machete's past, is all grainy and 70's looking, complete with dust particles and scratches on the film. Special features were rather disappointing and included only deleted scenes and an audience reaction track to be played over the film - basically laughing and ahhing. A good many of the deleted scenes were about an additional character in the form of Sartana's slutty twin, which led to some funny scenes that were wisely deleted. I do miss 10 Minute Film School and 10 Minute Cooking Class, though. I thought, by now, those were Robert Rodriguez staples. At least it looks super sharp in high def.
Machete is good for a few laughs. It's silly and super-violent with lots of explosions and insane fighting. Where else can you see someone hanging from a building by a bad guy's intestines? Yeah, it's that crazy. For fans of Rodriguez's work, it's worth a rent but probably not a purchase.
