Machete

 

It‘s refreshing to have Danny Trejo acting the title role of Robert Rodriguez’s latest Mexploitation offering. Looking like he has lived the life, the grizzled Machete hacks his way through the star-studded cast using every implement known to man after being double-crossed by a gruesome crime syndicate headed by Michael Booth (Jeff Fahey), who sneakily sets him up as an assassination patsy. Women feature predictably: Yvetta (Jessica Alba) is the hot immigration cop who teams up with Machete and his vigilantes, including a skimpily clad revolutionary, Luz (Michelle Rodriguez); meanwhile Booth’s daughter (Lindsey Lohan) likes a spot of familial three-way while enjoying her father’s narcotics. Then it just gets silly. In true grindhouse form, Machete will win fans by wearing its action-filled lack of depth on its sleeve whilst still having its heart in the right place. Yet, despite some amusing irony and violence Itchy and Scratchy would endorse, the movie is too repetitive in its ham-fistedness, which, at length, becomes tedious. [Juliet Buchan]