“Danny Trejo (Pendejo) is perfect as Machete Cortez, the Mexican agent who is the deadliest man on earth with a machete. Machete stabs first and talks later. ” —Cory Blair
Machete Kills is not a critic’s movie. “What’s plot?” the movie seems to ask as it boldly blazes through a Mexican desert full of blood and short on character development. The acting is hokey and over the top. The dialogue seems as if the lines were written by a middle-schooler trying to be edgy. The CGI is laughable at best and embarrassing at worst. There are multiple times when Machete Kills becomes too unbelievable for its own good, leaving the viewer confused and slack-jawed. Even the title is lame, seemingly inviting unoriginal reviewers to make stale and embarrassing puns such as “Machete Overkills” and “Machete Dies.” Just watch. It’ll happen.
That being said, it was also the most fun I’ve had at a movie theater this year.
A loving tribute to ’80s grindhouse movies, Machete Kills is perhaps the least serious movie I’ve ever seen. Director Robert Rodriguez apparently does not care about making a quality film. Instead, he focuses on catching the absolute over-the-top feeling of the gritty cult exploitation films that used to play in theaters only late at night.
The first film of the Machete trilogy, 2010’s Machete, started as a mock trailer featured in the Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino feature Grindhouse. When the trailer became more popular than the encompassing movie itself, Rodriguez decided to make it into a full-blown feature film.
Machete was an over-the-top hit with audiences, featuring the protagonist jumping over buildings with a Gatling gun-enhanced motorcycle and giving us genius lines such as “Machete don’t text.” There’s no way Machete Kills could be more insane than that, right?
Yet compared to Machete Kills, Machete is a mere pocket knife. Starring Charlie Sheen (Scary MoVie) as the president, Mel Gibson (Get the Gringo) as the tech-savvy villain straight out of a James Bond film and Antonio Banderas (Justin and the Knights of Valour) as a hit man called “The Chameleon” who continually changes faces, plus Cuba Gooding Jr. (The Butler) and Lady Gaga, this film is crazier than Gibson’s voicemails.
Danny Trejo (Pendejo) is perfect as Machete Cortez, the Mexican agent who is the deadliest man on earth with a machete. Machete stabs first and talks later. His mission is to stop Gibson’s character from blowing up the entire world. He ends up riding a nuclear missile, Dr. Strangelove-style, before disarming it in the air (using a machete, of course).
In one scene that sums up the movie perfectly, Cortez is chased by a multitude of bad guys. Out of nowhere, a helicopter swoops down to rescue him. However, instead of hopping in and escaping, Machete uses his grappling hook to latch onto the spinning blades and begins to whirl around the helicopter, becoming a machete-wielding blur. He proceeds to decapitate all of his enemies. It takes the audience some time to realize what exactly was happening on-screen, but when the insanity of Machete’s actions sink in, it’s met with laughter and applause.
Much like this scene, Machete Kills continually surprises its audience by constantly one-upping itself with crazier and crazier antics. This backfires occasionally as scenes are sometimes overflowing with stupidity, such as The Chameleon pulling off his/her seemingly unlimited number of faces, but the result is always entertaining.
The movie ends in a cliffhanger with Machete traveling to space in pursuit of Gibson’s character. Though Machete Kills didn’t wrap up nicely like the first installment, the trailer for the final film, Machete Kills Again … In Space!, featured before the credits, is drop-dead hilarious and excites the audience for the last film in the Machete trilogy.
The audience for Machete Kills is self-selecting. The trailers are upfront with what the film offers, and Machete Kills delivers perfectly on each of those promises. It’s not a movie for everyone. But if you can suspend your sense of disbelief and laugh at a movie that laughs at itself, you just might fall in love with Machete Kills.
