Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
After being set-up and betrayed by the man who hired him to assassinate a Texas Senator, an ex-Federale launches a brutal rampage of revenge against his former boss.
Machete is a gleefully trashy grindhouse exploitation film spun off from Rodriguez's fake trailer in Grease House (2007). The plot is deliberately thin and absurd — a revenge-meets-immigration polemic that works as schlocky fun but not as storytelling. The ensemble cast (De Niro, Seagal, Trejo, Alba, Lohan) is entertainingly self-aware, elevating the campy material. Cinematography leans into low-budget grindhouse aesthetics intentionally, but that doesn't make it technically accomplished. Novelty is decent — it successfully translates a fake trailer into a feature while delivering genuine exploitation energy — but the grindhouse revival had already been established. The ending is messy and overstuffed, typical of Rodriguez's tendency toward chaotic finales.