In REDEEMER, Marko Zaror plays The Redeemer, a mysterious, drifting avenger with a thing for Catholicism. He used to be a cartel hitman, now he’s fulfilling a big time penance. He’s got a full back tattoo of the crucifixion, carries a portable altar and various idols and penants of the saints, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he wears socks sewn out of a corner of the Shroud of Turin. For 95% of the movie he keeps the hood of either his sweatshirt or his jacket up. It’s not raining, so I think it’s to make him look like a monk. And every day he kneels and does a prayer ritual. The weird part of it is when he rubs a bullet with a scorpion painted on it against his forehead, then plays Russian roulette. Kind of a quirky thing to do every single day, right? I guess maybe that’s a thing though. I wouldn’t know, I was raised Presbyterian.
Anyway this individual The Redeemer is wandering through Chile on foot when he comes across some jerks beating up a fisherman. He watches for a while before he saves the guy. He’s real good with guns, but he’s Marko Zaror, so he’s also got some incredible kicks and punches. By rescuing the guy and taking shelter in the nearby home of a single mother they all end up involved in the man’s troubles: he found a bunch of money in his fishing net, he took it, it turned out to belong to gangsters, they are not real understanding about it. So The Redeemer and friends hide in a cave while he broods and prays and doesn’t talk and makes plans to clear all this up.
Plan A: Get the gangsters to promise no harm in exchange for their money back.
Plan B: Kill them all and use the money for the mom’s kid’s operation. (read the rest of this shit…)
There are lots of funny things in MACHETE KILLS. For a while it coasts on enjoyably stupid jokes, like the ridiculous trailer for part 3 of the series that it opens with. Early on it has a little faux-serious melodrama, playing it almost straight when a clash with rogue soldiers, a Mexican drug cartel and an army in lucha libre masks leads to the death of Machete (Danny Trejo, 
After I saw MANDRILL I was looking at Marko Zaror’s filmography and realized there was one I hadn’t noticed before, a starring vehicle that he did in Mexico instead of his native Chile. IMDB lists it as a 2009 release, after KILTRO and MIRAGEMAN, but from the looks of it I’m pretty sure he filmed it before those (it seems to have played a Mexican film festival in 2007, and the trailer says “introducing the Latin Dragon Marko Zaror”). It’s credited to his Mandrill Films and Zaror Brothers companies, but directed by one-timer Peter Van Lengen instead of his better known partner Ernesto Diaz Espinoza. 
“You must be Mandrill. Who else would be so fearless as to kiss my woman in my pool?”
KILTRO was the first Marko Zaror movie I saw, but for some reason I never reviewed it. Maybe it’s for the best, because I liked it then, love it now. It improves with age and extra viewings, like a wine that’s flavored by people looking at it (I don’t know). Later I did review 
Walter Hill’s original UNDISPUTED was an exaggerated look at the classic concept of the prison boxing league. UNDISPUTED II showed that the same thing is going on in Russia, but with full-on mixed martial arts. Naturally UNDISPUTED III: REDEMPTION takes it to the next level by creating an international tournament for the champions from all different prisons. Part 4 might have to send them into space.
I was thinking the other day: I wonder if super hero movies are the westerns of our time? A genre that’ll dominate for a while and then after a generation or two of being done to death it’s put off into storage, except for special occasions, like the fancy silverware. If so then I think we’re a little early with all these super hero deconstructions, these different versions of “what would really happen if somebody tried to be a super hero?” WATCHMEN and the upcoming KICKASS are the expensive, fantastical versions of that kind of idea and then there’s this slew of low budget indie ones like SPECIAL, DEFENDOR and MIRAGEMAN.
