5 That Were Awesome...
5. Machete - Machete
I couldn't not start here, could I? The article's about the sequel, and it's here that Rodriguez is allowed to drive every aspect of Trejo's onscreen persona up to 11. Lady killer? Yup. Badass? You bet. Latin icon? Well, that fleet of low-riders pretty much speaks for itself. It's a dream part for the actor, and he plays every single over-the-top scene with a certain gore-laden gusto. Hell, I wasn't kidding when I mentioned the gore. Looking to live up to its previous existence as a (hilarious) Grindhouse trailer, it takes the schlocky, bloodthirsty nature of the era's genre flicks and tries it's damndest to live up to them. I'd say it does remember, this is the film which allowed a man to abseil down stories using a human intestine, and if that's not a tick in the violence box, I don't know what is. Sure, there's not much in the way of characterisation going on here, and Machete himself is really just a heavy-handed cipher for the vengeance of Mexican immigrants upon the US, but that's not the point. Trejo is at his best when given an excuse to go off the badass deep-end, so when it comes to tooling up in a machete vest and embodying pure, unadulterated ass-whuppery, there's no-one better.