Sylvester Stallone just came out with a movie called The Expendables in which he recruits a bunch of action movie geriatrics on a soldier of fortune mission.

Not one to let originality get in the way of a good cinematic formula, cigar-chomping Sly must have seen that venerable action flick Wild Geese which recruits- what- a number of cigar-chomping geriatrics on a soldier of fortune mission. Then you’ve got another film coming out in October called Red in which Bruce Willis recruits a cadre of ex-CIA assassin old heads on a mission. I’ve just seen the trailer, but I don’t think Helen Mirren smokes a cigar in this.

So it’s either the season for recruitment, cigars, or the senior citizen special at Coco’s, take your pick. Probably the latter now that the 66 year-old Danny Trejo, the Marlon Brando of cult movie bad guys, gets his first lead role in Machete [pronounced Ma-CHET-ay] so called because Trejo carries more of them than you’d find in Rwanda.

How many 66 year-old guys can remove their shirts and still inspire awe? So the fact that Trejo’s truly badass character also gets played as a stone-faced, taciturn sex symbol capable of being summoned incessantly to the mattresses by women 40 years younger than he, doesn’t seem to be too much of a stretch.

In one instance, Jessica Alba, playing an INA agent in stretch slacks and high heels, tries to show him the ins and outs of a computer. As you might expect from someone of his generation, Machete doesn’t care to know shit about how the Internet or cell phones work.

“Machete don’t text,” he growls simply at Alba. That sums it up.

Goodness knows, fans of Trejo and director Robert Rodriguez waited a long time for this project to become a reality. Rodriguez first introduced the Machete character as a mock trailer in the Grindhouse double feature he collaborated with Quentin Tarantino on, and Machete is so rife with stock Tarantinoisms, it wouldn’t be surprising if he had a hand in this.

You’ve got the tough chick with the eye patch [Michelle Rodriguez], off the wall quotable one-liners and the ritual career disinterment of Hollywood has beens like Don Johnson and Steven Seagal. Maybe Robert DeNiro counts, too, because his resume hasn’t been picking up options on Scorsese projects, as of late.

You’ve got crucifixions, beheadings, considerable female nudity and casual disembowelments. In one scene, Trejo, playing an ex Federale of mythical status, makes an escape out a hospital window by gutting a bad guy and using his intestines as an escape rope, seconds after we learn the human body has about 60 feet of this stuff coiled up inside.

The very freckled Lindsay Lohan, gets naked, and Alba, only a sex tape away from porn star status, gets started on that road by appearing in her birthday suit. Michelle Rodriguez, who mans a taco truck as a front for an underground counter-revolutionary army, sadly does not, but she’s rapidly achieving her own following as a gun-toting, no-nonsense broad.

What’s particularly eye-opening about Machete, which is scripted by director Rodriguez, is that it’s as racist as bad taste allows. And very funny. There’s taco humor [every other scene features either those or burritos], immigrant humor, red neck politician DeNiro running for election on the electrified border fence platform; Don Johnson [and DeNiro] shooting Mexicans for sport and souped up Lowriders equipped with rocket launchers. [There’s another hilarious cameo, courtesy of makeup artist Tom Savini, who plays a vain hitman hired to take out Trejo.]

Seagal, with a very disturbing hairline, plays the Mexican Mr. Big [in more ways than one] who’s funding DeNiro’s campaign with the intention of controlling the Texas-Mexican border to facilitate the drug trade while the demonic-looking Jeff Fahey, who I think steals the movie, carries out the plan as DeNiro’s aide-de-camp.

The movie’s in-joke is the hots Fahey expresses for Lohan, his daughter. And the entire scheme unravels when its discovered that the local priest [Cheech Marin playing Trejo’s brother] has been web camming Fahey’s confessions of lust about Lindsay who, in one more nude scene for good measure, skinny dips in the pool along with mom [Alicia Rachel Marek] and Trejo thinking he’s the new gardener.

The absurdist clip this movie rolls along at, doesn’t find it preposterous at all that Lohan would don nuns’ garb and be wielding a machine gun in the film’s us against them show down. Of course, by this time you’re rooting for the Mex’s. Or should be.