Machete
Kills: ***/*****, or 6/10
Robert
Rodriguez continues telling the strange and ever over-the-top
chronicles of his delightfully violent character Machete (Danny
Trejo), who once starred in a fake trailer attached to his original
Grindhouse segment Planet Terror and suddenly embarked
on a life of his own. Though no faux trailer for this second
installment was ever attached to other similar themed films (maybe
there just were none), Machete Kills itself opens with a
trailer for the alleged third movie, the dubiously titled Machete
Kills Again... In Space! It's both a stroke of genius – as this
'prevue' perfectly sets the tone for what's to come, as well as pokes
fun to the whole B-movie style Rodriguez embraces so vigorously more
aptly in two minutes than the following film does in two hours –
but also rather frustrating, as we know exactly how the movie we're
about to see ends and what characters survive to fight another day
(in space, yes). As such, Machete Kills is largely rendered
devoid of any large narrative surprises. As we'll find out soon
enough, the film doesn't rely on story structure at all, as in this
regard it's kind of a mess, bloated with characters and motivations,
many which change over the course of the movie. We're just supposed
to roll with it as we did in the case of the first film, but it's
obvious the paying-hommage-to-grindhouse-cinema is getting
stale. This time, Machete is hired by the President of the USA
(Charlie Sheen, humorously billed under his birth name Carlos Estevez
and given an 'introducing' credit accordingly) to stop an arms dealer
with a bad case of schizophrenia (Demian Bichir) from launching a
nuclear assault upon Washington D.C. Why Machete cares about America
at all, being an exploited Mexican alien and so forth, is only
briefly addressed as we're not supposed to care to much for it is his
simple duty to 'go kick some ass', and we like to see him do just
that (we do!). Of course the situation is not nearly as simple as it
seems and the bad guy's trail leads to an even bigger villain, a big
shot industrialist named Voz (Mel Gibson) who harbors even deadlier
threats to mankind's health. Along the road, Machete must dodge
various well armed, colourful hitmen and legions of mindless minions,
survive plots by double agents and also make love to beautiful women
from time to time. A lot to do in only two hours, and what's more, a
lot of characters to introduce and successively kill off in new and
interesting ways.
Even
more star studded than Machete's previous venture, this movie
features appearances by an overly large score of popular actors
including the likes of Jessica Alba, Amber Heard, Lady Gaga, Antonio
Banderas, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Vanessa Hudgens. With so many
celebrities present, it's obvious a lot of them don't get the screen
time they deserve. Another, more serious result is that Trejo himself
feels somewhat overwhelmed by it all (or maybe it's just his age, as
he's pushing 70) and delivers a less than stellar performance than
we're used to, not nearly exuberating the same type of invincibility
and 'badassery' as he did before. Fortunately we still have the
scantily clad tough girl Michelle Rodriguez (no relation), reprising
her role as secret revolutionary Luz, to make up for Trejo's lack of
bravura. In all other respects, Machete Kills is equally
enjoyable as its predecessor, containing the maximum amount of scenes
of idiotic ultraviolence, sweaty sensuality (though surprisingly no
actual nudity this time) and a plethora of insanely funny genre
self-referencing that have proven hallmarks of Rodriguez' grindhouse
flicks. My favorite, apart from the opening trailer for Part 3, is
the sex scene which out of the blue has the film stock distorted and
blurred just when it got saucy, with an overlaying text asking us to
put on our 3D-glasses. At least in terms of sheer simple fun Machete
once again gives us what we expect, which does still make you want to
see him kill again in space: like the trailer says, because 'it's all
galactic and shit'.
