Fewer things are more fun than a blood-soaked Machete!

Machete originally started as a one-off joke trailer for Grindhouse. That trailer was ridiculous. And awesome. And now, it’s been made into a fully fledged movie. Which is ridiculous. And awesome. Nearly every conceivable facet of this movie put a massive grin on my face as I chuckled and chortled and outright laughed at it, enjoying the whole ride.


First and foremost, it should be noted that this movie is intentionally “bad.” The acting is WAY over the top, the action is WAY over the top, and the story is just about as loose as the women in it. But all of this rolls together into something so incredibly kick-ass that any “flaws” in the movie aren’t flaws at all. It’s all an intentional homage of the old grindhouse movie style in which ultra-violence was status quo, women barely wore clothes, and exploitation was awesome.


Danny Trejo stars as the titular Machete, an ex-Mexican Federale. He’s after a drug kingpin in Mexico when the film starts, and within five minutes there’s over a dozen bodies (though not whole bodies) lying around. Machete storms a bar in an attempt to rescue some damsel in distress (who happens to be a very naked damsel) and we find out where he got his namesake. Instead of using a gun, he just goes room to room lopping off bad guys’ heads, arms, legs, ears, noses, everything and anything he can. Eventually he’s helpless in the hands of bad guy numero uno Torrez, played by none other than Steven Seagal. Anyone (and I mean literally ANYONE) could do a better fake-Mexican-accent than Steven did, but they couldn’t do it as convincingly bad as he did. And his entire performance during the course of the movie is pure gold-plated gold.


Torrez gives Machete the ultimate cause for revenge and then leaves him in a dire situation we never see the resolution of due to the sudden title sequence, complete with massive amounts of film scratches. Honestly, it’s probably fair to assume Machete just got out of it by sheer bad-assery alone. Either way, the title sequence ends and we find ourselves three years later, introduced to two more of our man villains. Von Johnson (Don Johnson), the leader of a local vigilante militia dead set on keeping illegal Mexicans out of the country, and Senator McLaughlin (Robert De Niro), a politician who is ardently campaigning for harsher immigration policies, including a massive, electrified, border fence. We learn that these two men are very evil when they catch a Mexican couple crossing the border and they execute both the pregnant woman, and the young man she was with. There’s no deep political ideology or philosophical debate on what’s right and what’s wrong here, it’s just straightforward “They just shot a pregnant lady in the baby!” evil here.


This takes us to Machete’s current state in a day labor camp with a bunch of illegal aliens, run by Luz (Michelle Rodriguez), who resides in a taco truck and is constantly harassed by immigration agent Sartana (Jessica Alba). Through a fight Machete gets noticed as the one-bad-mother that he is and is hired by a mysterious suit, Booth (Jeff Fahey), to assassinate Senator McLaughlin. Of course this all goes wrong and the movie kicks it into a second overdrive. Machete is now hunted by just about everyone in the film and is on the run while he goes after those who betrayed him (D. All of the above). What follows is more violent than a lot of horror films, and oh my God is it great.


Not to ruin any of the surprises Machete has in store, but Machete himself has a tendency to use the body parts of other people for other uses than they were originally planned for. He also has a penchant for using blades of all sorts up close and personal, although he does make hilarious use of some other implements, notably a weed whacker. The poor goons he chops to bits the whole movie through aren’t standard faceless thoroughfare either. There are a handful of reoccurring grunts that provide constant laughs.


Eventually minor characters are introduced later, such as Machete’s brother, a priest with shotguns played by Cheech Marin, or Booth’s sluttier than slutty daughter (Lindsay Lohan) and although they’re incredibly short parts, they play them perfectly. There’s even a hitman hired to take out Machete and the advertisement for him lists “1-800-hitman” as the number to call. The absurdity of Marin’s priest-who-was-a-killer-but-now-reluctantly-kills-again or Lohan’s delinquent daughter who orchestrates a threesome with her mother and the gardener to further her porn site are really what sells them. The fact that all the characters in the film are ridiculously exaggerated is the icing to the bad acting cake.


Equally as awesomely overdone is the rampant nudity and sex. Within minutes of opening Machete slings a nude woman over his shoulder. He’s rescued at one point by Luz, who, in effort to see if the man lives up to the legend, hops on Machete. He has that aforementioned threesome with Lohan and her mother. And, in the wake of a drunken Jessica Alba, proceeds to decline her bed, only to be swayed by her begging and begrudgingly lies with her.


Machete is a great, stupid movie. To sum it up in a single shot from the movie itself, Machete jumps a chopper motorcycle over a massive explosion while blasting two dozen bad guys with the CHAINGUN MOUNTED ON HIS MOTORCYCLE. There’s rampant nudity, most shots have copious amounts of dismemberment and blood, and its execution is impeccable. Machete is probably the most bad-ass summer action movie so far this summer, a strong claim concerning its competition. Run, don’t walk, to go see, MACHETE!