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The Arizona Republic"Machete" is insanely violent, insanely over-the-top. It's pretty much flat-out insane.

It's also insanely entertaining, though not - not - for the faint of heart. Director Robert Rodriguez has expanded his mock trailer from "Grindhouse," with Danny Trejo starring as Machete, a wronged federale now in the U.S. working as a day laborer.

He gets caught up in a murky political plot involving illegal immigration, but if you're looking for thoughtful, clear-headed discourse on the topic, this is not the place to find it. Rodriguez and co-director Ethan Maniquis treat immigration with the subtlety that Wile E. Coyote brings to bird-watching.

When the film, written by director Rodriguez and his cousin Alvaro Rodriguez, tackles the topic head-on - when bodyguards recently beaten by Machete pause for a discussion about the irony that Americans let immigrants care for their children and work in their yards but won't let them into the country, for instance - it seems ridiculously out of place (of course, there's always the chance that it's supposed to). But when Machete yields a weed-whacker as a weapon, there is a subtle beauty to it.

Wait, did I say "subtle"? That word has no business being associated with "Machete." In a movie that features Lindsay Lohan, dressed in a nun's habit, firing a machine gun, it just doesn't fit.

The story begins in Mexico, where Machete and other authorities are at war with Torrez, a drug kingpin played by - yes - Steven Seagal. Tragic circumstances lead him to flee to Texas, and by "tragic," I mean a scene involving so many beheadings in five minutes that Henry VIII would find it distasteful.

Three years later, a strange offer arrives from a man named Booth (Jeff Fahey): He'll pay Machete $150,000 to assassinate McLaughlin (Robert De Niro), a state senator whose campaign commercials refer to immigrants as an "infestation" of "parasites."

Meanwhile, Luz (Michelle Rodriguez) uses the truck she sells tacos out of as a base of operations to connect undocumented workers. She's being watched by Sartana (Jessica Alba), a conflicted Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent. And there's Von (Don Johnson), who leads a small army of vigilantes taking border security into their own hands.

Booth also must contend with druggie daughter June (Lohan), who has big plans as a self-styled Internet, um, celebrity. In the sort of self-referential, wink-and-nod sensibility of the film, Lohan's character says, "I know all about what the online world wants. And they want me."

These elements and more will eventually come together, sort of, in the way that these things do in movies, to create a kind of superhero out of Machete.

Trejo is fine, but mostly gets to grimace. The acting generally isn't exactly riveting - Alba's most convincing scene is when she is practicing kickboxing on the Wii - and the story is ridiculous.

But what cuts through all of this (literally, at times) is Robert Rodriguez's clear love of film. He apes the grindhouse style to perfection, with grainy film stock for the opening credits and hilarious use of music (every love scene, as it were, is punctuated with the chucka-chucka soundtrack from porn movies), along with the requisite buckets of blood.

Hey, if a doctor mentions in passing that the human intestine can be 60 feet long, why not put that knowledge to use?

Rodriguez uses everything. Too much? Of course. In a movie like "Machete," that's the idea.

Copyright 2010 Arizona Republic

'Machete' Serves Relentless, Bloody Action

By DAVID GERMAIN, AP Movie Writer

Fans who saw the trailer in Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's 2007 "Grindhouse" double-feature continually asked Rodriguez to turn the make-believe ad featuring Danny Trejo into a real blood-and-guts vengeance flick.

Rodriguez has complied, maintaining a fair amount of the wicked humor and every bit of the savage bloodshed the trailer promised.

Viewers get precisely what they're paying for: beheadings, skewerings and kill shots to the head by the dozen, with other means of dispatch — death by corkscrew, high heels, crucifixion — tossed in for variety.

They also get a crazy range of supporting players — Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, Steven Seagal, Don Johnson, Lindsay Lohan — all having a ball committing atrocities.

Rodriguez is like a kid in a candy store — a pretty twisted kid in a very sick and disturbing candy store — but fans of his R-rated stuff, including "From Dusk Till Down" and the "El Mariachi" movies, already knew that and are on board.

They'll most definitely be on board with "Machete," which gives ex-prison inmate Trejo his first lead role in a long career of mostly smallish parts as taciturn tough guys who choose their words carefully.

Trejo's Machete doesn't talk much, either, but he's a commandingly fun presence, a former Mexican federal cop working as a day laborer in Texas after being left for dead by drug kingpin Torrez (Seagal), who also killed his family.

Trouble follows Machete, who goes on the run after he's hired as the fall guy in an assassination attempt on a radically conservative anti-immigration state senator (De Niro).

"Machete" has the same made-on-the-cheap, outlandishly violent '70s vibe as "Grindhouse," down to the funky music provided by Rodriguez's band Chingon (besides co-directing with Ethan Maniquis, Rodriguez also is a producer, co-writer and editor on the movie).To clear his name and take sweet revenge, Machete goes on a rampage that puts him up against Seagal's Torrez, De Niro's senator, a slimy political kingmaker (Jeff Fahey), a ruthless border vigilante (Johnson) and scores of lesser thugs.

Allies rally to Machete's side — a right-minded immigration agent (Alba), a taco vendor who moonlights as a revolutionary (Michelle Rodriguez), and Machete's priestly brother (Cheech Marin).

De Niro's a hoot, with a Southern drawl reminiscent of his accent in "Cape Fear" as he plays the senator's comic-book xenophobia with joyous frenzy. And Trejo is a welcome variation on the slick action hero — a cunning, ragged survivor who prefers blades but gets very creative with guns, gardening tools and kitchen utensils when other weapons are scarce.

Most everyone else does their part well enough, though why Lohan signed on is a mystery. Her role is just strange — hitting close to home when she appears as a drugged-up party girl early on, with Rodriguez eventually maneuvering her into a nun's habit as she joins his overindulgent finale of gunplay and explosions.

Like most of Rodriguez's movies — whether his family flicks or his action romps — "Machete" is never as fun or funny as he thinks it is. There are clever wisecracks, and some of the action is fresh and inventive, if you don't mind blood and body parts flying in all directions.

Yet much of the violence is repetitive — when you've seen one head sent tumbling by a machete, do you really need to see 10 more? — while the movie lapses into indolence in between action sequences, the characters uninvolving, the dialogue boring.

The good news for fans: there isn't all that much downtime between the relentless action, which, after all, is what that fake "Machete" trailer promised, and what the audience has come for.

Copyright 2010 Associated Press