(Sun 9th, Tues 11th - Fri 14th / 8.30pm / £4/3/2 TTT)
(Robert Rodriguez & Ethan Maniquis / USA / 2010 / 104 minutes / Cert 18)
In his first leading role, Danny Trejo plays Machete, a renegade Mexican federale. Escaping to Texas after clashing with Torrez (Steven Seagal), a Mexican drug kingpin who controls every politician on both sides of the border, he’s then hired to assassinate a corrupt state senator (Robert De Niro).
Realising he’s been set up though, Machete launches a brutal rampage of revenge, along the way encountering a shotgun-wielding padre (Cheech Marin), a nun with a gun (Lindsay Lohan), a revolutionary-minded taco seller (Michelle Rodriguez), and a murderous border vigilante (Don Johnson). As if all that wasn’t enough to contend with, he’s also got a highly persistent immigration agent (Jessica Alba) on his trail…

Expanding on the spoof trailer he originally created for the ‘Grindhouse’ double-bill (-which he helmed with Quentin Tarantino in 2007), Rodriguez this time co-directs with his long-time editor Ethan Maniquis. The result is loud, lurid, non-stop Tex-Mex pulp action; knowingly and ridiculously over-the-top in its cartoon carnage.