So Tell Me About Machete: A Movieline FAQ

Is this Lindsay Lohan's comeback role?

Probably not? Though she's in on one hell of a joke: Starring as Booth's daughter April, she's hauled out of a filthy drug den by her father (who kills basically everyone inside and later reminds her to come to him for narcotics), where she promptly pukes on the lawn. Later scenes qualify Booth's icky, more-than-fatherly interest in her, but it's not until she slaps on her avenging-nun get-up that her self-possession picks up speed. And by then the movie's essentially over. But she'll be back.

Is she really "nude the whole time"?

No. In fact, despite last week's report to the contrary, I'm not totally sure that Lohan's one fully topless scene in a menage a trois with Machete and April's mother is even her. Her face is turned away from the camera and conspicuously obscured by her hair. Whether or not its a double, the scene lasts maybe 10 seconds. When Machete kidnaps the ladies after their tryst, she does wake up nude in a church, where the only available garment is the nun's robe and habit. Her hair falls over her breasts as she approaches it, though, and it's not an especially revealing look. So we're talking about something like 45 seconds of a role comprising maybe six or seven scenes. Sorry, pervs!

Does she really lick a handgun?

Alas, no. Her oral gun fixation is limited to character posters and photo shoots only. But she does seem to find God, which is almost as shocking.

How bad is Robert De Niro's Texas accent?

Terrible, but he's also in the joke: McLaughlin essentially is just Robert De Niro playing a virulently racist Texas senator. In private, he might as well be Jake LaMotta or Al Capone.

How is the rest of the ensemble?

Strong. Alba and Michelle Rodriguez play well off each other; Marin and the oily Fahey have a wild scene together; Seagal is Seagal, framed mostly in a computer screen and not too conspicuously girthy; and Don Johnson, as the border-patrolling vigilante Lt. Stillman, is full of dark-hearted sociopath majesty. In a film full of such vile creeps, it takes a special something to really claim that HMFIC distinction. Johnson has it. And he lives to fight another day, making him a kind of Darth Vader to Trejo's Machete Skywalker for another two films at least. Without the secret paternity thing, of course.

Will there be a sequel?

Per the closing credits, anyway: "Machete will return in Machete Kills and Machete Kills Again!"

Will it yield any one-liners?

"Machete don't text." And possibly, "Blood of Christ? Tastes like merlot to me."

What does it mean for the debate over illegal immigration?

Probably nothing in the long run, but it's timed pretty exquisitely to dovetail with the ongoing immigration battles in Arizona and elsewhere. (As a Fox release, it'll be interesting to see how Fox News handles its pro-immigration/anti-zealot callout, if at all.) And already the film chief in Rodriguez's home state of Texas is undecided on whether to grant state tax incentives to the production, which was produced entirely locally in Austin yet satirizes corrupt, homicidal senators and their even more bloodthirsty cronies on the border. Developing...

What is its box-office potential?

Good question: On a Labor Day weekend with Expendables still skimming off the top and George Clooney lurking with The American, is $12 million attainable? I can't see it dipping below $10 million, especially if buzz holds up the way it has over the last few days. Anything else you want to know?

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