Machete Kills: Movie Review

Machete Kills: Movie Review

Cast: Danny Trejo, Lady Gaga, Amber Heard, Mel Gibson, Alexa Vega, Sofia Vergara, Charlie Sheen, Antonio Banderas, Michelle Rodriguez

After breathing life into a character which appeared as part of the Planet Terror / Death Proof faux trailers, and scoring box office gold with a spin off, Machete (Danny Trejo) returns once again.

This time around, after the death of his partner (Jessica Alba) at the hands of a masked killer, Machete is recruited by the US Government (aka POTUS Charlie Sheen) to take on an arms dealer in Mexico.

The rub? This arms dealer wants to fire a rocket on Washington and wipe out the government for doing little to wipe the scourge of the Mexican drug cartels from the planet.

So, it's upto Machete, a big knife and some cojones to save the day....

Where the first Machete had a degree of panache and self-awareness in terms of its exploitation, this latest Grindhouse / cult effort from director Robert Rodriguez brings little to the table.

Amid a slew of killings, beheadings and general limb dismemberment, Danny Trejo, complete with his ruggedly lined face stumbles about as a dull Machete, looking tired, dazed and confused as to what exactly is going on. In amid his monosyllabic gruntings and one liners ("Machete don't tweet", "Machete don't smoke" to name but two of them), he seems lost at sea and confused as to what exactly is expected of him this time around.

Only Modern Family's buxom Sofia Vergara seems to have a ball with her part, playing a whorehouse mistress whose main thrust is to avenge her dead daughter, killed when under Machete's charge. She fires the role with such aplomb that she's sorely missed when her brief time is over. And she brings new meaning to showing off her guns as well.

But that's half the problem with this latest Machete film - it feels sorely unfinished and under-cooked.

The first was a complete story whereas this latest seems to find Rodriguez suffused with the desire to build everything up to a climax that doesn't deliver and only teases a future installment, which appears to be set in space and is likely to be a grindhouse take on Star Wars, judging by the faux trailers which preface and bookend the piece. And the hints of a third film are terrifying, given the whole thing could have been epically wrapped up in this one alone.

Narrative threads simply disappear or are just disposed of to move the story along and it's utterly frustrating and feels like a callous disregard for the audience, regardless of the constraints of working within the grindhouse genre.

Sure, Rodriguez manages a clever way to bring in a slew of guest stars (ooh, look it's Lady Gaga, prancing like she was in a music video, oooh, it's Cuba Gooding Jr, oooh it's Antonio Banderas) by having them play different faces of a criminal known as La Cameleon. (He even deserves praise for using so many women actors (even if they do have their butts hanging out of chaps) amid the action) But even they are simply thrown by the wayside when Rodriguez tires of playing with his celluloid toys.

Carlos Estevez (aka The winning Charlie Sheen) is wooden as the US President and Mel Gibson is utterly banal and unconvincing as the bad guy (with Rodriguez slyly hinting at Scientology but not bothering to go the full hog); even Demian Bichir hams it up as the OTT baddie initially, before he falls prey to the gory slaughter rained down upon the cast. A couple of gory kills will satisfy the adolescents in the audience, but there's little else here given how tame it all feels and how self-indulgent it becomes.

In short, the creatively limp Machete Kills does nothing except fire blanks.

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