What is Machete, anyway?
Machete is a feature-length adaptation of a trailer that was included in Grindhouse, directed by Robert Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis from a script Rodriguez originally wrote for star Danny Trejo in 1993. (It was since rewritten with Alvaro Rodriguez.) It features Trejo as the title character, a former Mexican federale exiled to the United States after vicious drug lord Torrez (Seagal) kills his wife. Getting by as a day laborer years later, Machete is approached by the mysterious Booth (Jeff Fahey) to kill Sen. John McLaughlin (De Niro), whose anti-immigration policies threaten the flow of cheap labor into Texas. But nothing and nobody is what or whom they seem, from Alba’s scheming immigration agent to Michelle Rodriguez’s taco-slinging activist.
