Machete is a film by Robert Rodriguez, the man who brought us such things as Spy Kids and the trailer for Machete, about a pissed off Mexican going on a vindictive rampage using 3 weapons in particular: a machete, a machine gun, and his penis.

Machete is an ex-federale (That's Mexican for policeman) who gets hired to assassinate a governmental candidate, only to be double-crossed and framed. He then goes and kills everyone.

A bit of background information: This film came about after a spoof trailer for it was included in the Grindhouse double-feature, produced by Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. The trailer was so popular that it was put into production as a full feature.

Much like Planet Terror (Rodriguez' half of Grindhouse), it takes great pleasure in over-the-top violence. The trouble is that Machete doesn't stick to it's Grindhouse roots, so most of this seems out of place and just bad. While it is very funny on the most part, it stinks of just taking the most popular aspects of Planet Terror and quadrupling the quantity at the cost of plot.

The trouble is that when you try to make something that's supposed to be "bad", you tread a very fine line between being parodic and actually being bad. Machete seems to have fallen into the latter. The writing is shockingly bad in parts, which leads me to believe that Mr Rodriguez got a touch confused. You're supposed to be making a parody of a grindhouse-style B-movie, not an actual grindhouse-style B-movie.

The all-star cast includes the likes of Steven Seagal, Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba and Lindsay Lohan. The fact that all of these people agreed to take part makes me think that no-one was really taking this film seriously; The first three for actually being in the film, and the last one because Rodriguez decided to cast her.

Ultimately, the film isn't so good. It seems to have been built around the trailer, with Rodriguez just filling in the gaps between each scene like he was connecting up the dots. Except instead of a pen he used excrement. Liberally.