The character of Machete originally turned up in a fake trailer that director Robert Rodriguez made for exploitation movie homage Grindhouse, his ill-fated double-bill collaboration with fellow B-movie enthusiast Quentin Tarantino, which flopped in the US. When the movie sticks to being a long-form version of the trailer, Machete delivers deadpan laughs and bloody, tongue-in-cheek action thrills. Sadly, that's not all that's in the mix here, as Danny Trejo's craggy ex-lawman with a tragic past is tempted into carrying out a hit on a racist American senator (Robert De Niro) and winds up on the run from the FBI. Ham-fistedly raising issues of immigration and labourers' rights, this raucous romp goes on to to throw several more haphazard subplots into the mix, including one involving a gratuitously nude and lascivious Lindsay Lohan, before settling into a needlessly protracted chase that finds De Niro at his most hammy and least funny in years. Trejo rallies at the end to give the film a cool, satisfying send-off but, for the most part, this entertaining but often shambolic romp sorely needs his laconic presence throughout.

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.