My review for 2010’s “Machete” I said could be summed up in one word: “ridiculous.” This sequel can also be described with the same word, but instead of the good kind of ridiculous from the original, this is the bad kind. Like the “I can’t believe they just did that” kind of ridiculous.
While there’s a lot of fun to be had in the ridiculousness and zany exploitation ultra-violence, the movie’s plot and script simultaneously take itself too seriously and not seriously enough. There’s far too much that is self-referential and reverential from a franchise that is still in its infancy.
The plot is thus: former Federale Machete is called back up for a special mission by the President of the US and handled by an an agent posing as Miss San Antonio: Track down insane former cartel operative and folk hero freedom fighter/terrorist “Mad Man” Mendez, who has a missle pointed at Washington and disarm it. Oh yeah, and he has multiple personalities, one of whom has strapped a timer to his heart, and in either 24 hours or if his heart stops beating, the missle launches. In the process, Machete ends up having to bring Mendez back across the border to the US with the cartels on his tail, along with face-changing assasin The Chameleon and a brothel full of insane femme fatales. Yes. That’s what I said. Once back in the US, the movie makes a weird tonal shift from dirty western to futuristic sci-fi as Machete tracks down the missle’s designer, played by Mel Gibson, to try to disarm it before it launches. But he has another hidden agenda.
The great thing about movies like the original “Machete” or “Hobo With a Shotgun” is their simple, straitforward plotting and execution. This is anything but, with weird twists and turns that just make no sense, except as a mcguffin to lead to another excuse for an action scene. And their leads played the roles stoicly, both enjoying what they were doing and imbuing their lines with a wonderful gravitas.
This is somehow gone from the usually reliable Dany Trejo’s performance here. And the first thing I blame is the script. Instead of being written by Robert Rodriguez himself, Machete Kills was written by newcomer Kyle Ward. Rodriguez is usually good for short, punchy dialogue (some favorites of mine include the bar scenes in “Desparado” with Steve Buscemi and Quentin Tarantino or Johnny Depp’s speech about pork carnitas in “Once Upon a Time in Mexico”) Instead, we get plodding, self-important speechifying about how you can’t kill Machete, because he is vengeance incarnate. . . blah blah blah. And because everyone learned “Machete don’t text” three years ago, we get not one, not two, not three, but four callbacks to that line in the film.
There are some saving graces. Some of the performances are phenomenal. Mel Gibson is, literally, out of this world. Charlie Sheen (aka Carlos Estevez) has a lot of fun here — and the best parts of the movie might be the fake political ads supporting him. Sofia Vergara (Modern Family) is completely over the top as a bordello madam intent on revenge on Machete. And Walter Goggins (Justified), Cuba Gooding Jr, Antonio Banderas, and Lady Gaga all appear only too briefly in this film. But my personal favorite was actually Chilean martial artist Marko Zaror as the best imposing mute big bad since Jaws appeared in a Bond film.
Speaking of Jaws, this film mirrors, in many ways, my feelings about the James Bond film “Diamonds Are Forever.” It was the first time James Bond went really campy, and it misfired. Also, in Diamonds, Sean Connery escapes the bad guys on a dune buggy chase through the desert. In this, Trejo escapes on a. . . I’m not going to spoil it. Except to say “Star Wars.”
There is actually a lot here to love in terms of ridiculous throw aways and pure fanservice. Ok, before I go any further, I’m going to get into spoilers. These are not plot spoilers, but they are gags and awesomeness that knowing about them beforehand I would call spoilage. Ok? Ok. SPOILERS:
Star Wars references like landspeeders, people getting put into carbon freeze, and even a tease of lightsabers. You also have gags/horrible deaths through things like. . . oh, getting your intentines pulled out into rotating helicopter blades, or getting ground up by a speedboat propellor. Come to think of it, there are several instances of death by helicopter in this move. A guy gets chopped in half laterally– in the first 5 minutes, no less. A ray gun that turns people inside out. And so much more.
And then, if that wasn’t ridiculous enough, we find out at the end that the third Machete movie will be “Machete Kills Again. . .IN SPACE!” And we get a trailer for that which includes the afforementioned lightsaber fights and so on.
See what I mean? Ridiculous. But I can’t say, even as slightly disappointed as I was by this, how much I would be psyched for the third movie. That looks ludicrous. But if the original Machete was Thunderball, this is Diamonds Are Forever– and let’s hope the third isn’t Moonraker.
2 stars