Even after making a full length movie out of his fake, Mexploitation trailer, Machete, it seemed that Robert Rodriguez still hadn’t gotten Grindhouse out of his system. Grindhouse, in case you’d forgotten, was Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s ode to the double-bills of deranged exploitation pictures flea-pit cinemas (aka. Grindhouses) would show back in the 70s and early 80s and despite the obvious love all over the screen, the movie bombed so hard it left a crater. Subsequently Tarantino moved on and went back to the more “art-house” versions of the exploitation movies he makes, but Rodriguez seemed stuck in the mindset of gifting legendary character actor, Danny Trejo his own action franchise and thus Machete was born proper.
However, while the copious gore, prominent nudity and an A-list cast all pushed to make the joke work, it turned out that the joke wasn’t funny anymore and even a lover of Grindhouse trash like myself was left feeling a little frustrated.
However, it turns out Rodriguez obviously wasn’t and three years later we got a sequel, Machete Kills, which heaped on yet more absurdity while Trejo scowled for an Olympic gold in glaring. Had Machete sharpened his edge or did was the movie more likely to cut a fart than flesh and bone?
We rejoin unkillable Mexican, Machete Cortez as he and Agent Sartana Rivera attempt to thwart a weapons sale between corrupt American troops and a drug cartel, but in the midst of a bloody double cross and Machete killing lots of men, another mysterious masked gang show up and slaughter everyone – including Agent Rivera. Machete wakes to find himself framed for the massacre and in the company of the extraordinarily racist Sheriff Doakes; however, after proving to be unervingly resistant to hanging, a call comes in from U.S. President Rathcock that Machete is needed for a desperate mission.
Lured into service with the promise of having his criminal record expunged and granted U.S. citizenship, Machete’s mission seemd fairly simple – hunt down deranged lunatic Marcos Mendez who is threatening to launch a missile at Washington if America doesn’t sort out the cartels and corrupt Mexican government. It’s at this point things start to get a little spicy as Mendez not only has a split personality that renders him both a psychotic madman and benevolent revolutionary, but he’s also attached a device to his heart that means the missile will launch if his pumper stops thumping. Further complicating matters is the ferocious brothel madam, Desemonda, who wants to obliterate Mendez for the murder of their daughter and the multi-faced La Chameleón, a gender bending assasin who Hope’s to score the hit Mendez has taken out on himself.
However, the greatest threat actually may be billionaire weapons designer Luther Voz, a man with unlimited resources who has big plans for both Machete and the world in general…
I’m sure many will disagree with me, but even though Machete Kills proves to be the same frustrating waste of talent as the first movie, I still found it to be a more enjoyable experence than Machete’s first outing. I attribute the fact that the sequel didn’t have to try and contort itself to fit into the existing plot of the pre-existing fake trailer and thus feels far less restrained more freer. It’s also dropped a lot of the Grindhouse conventions in order to try and cheekily riff on the cartoonish lunacy of the Roger Moore era James Bonds as the film suddenly becomes a hyperactive nod to the more cartoony entries of the spy series the longer it goes on. However, the problem persists that, as concept, modern comedy Grindhouse movies featuring the kind of cast who usually wouldn’t be seen dead in this type of thing just isn’t that funny anymore and as a result, feels less like the glory days of Desperado and From Dusk Till Dawn and more like a slightly upscale Sharknado.
Trejo is still a trooper and will always boast on of the best death-stares of anyone in Hollywood, but aside from the odd, dead pan blisteringly dry aside (“Machete happens.”), her literally has nothing to do but stand there and wait for the next bout of machete swinging to start. As a result, it’s up to the chaotic cast of supporting characters to carry the film, but Rodriguez stuffs his movie with so many oddball and grotesqueries, the film often loses focus with it’s own plot, causing it to go off on random tangents like a chatty grandparent with too much sherry in them.
Now, while I fully understand that that’s the whole joke, it’s not actually that fun to endure. The opening plot shows promise as Machete goes on the run from multiple killers with Demián Bichir’s dangerously unpredictable maniac like something out of a ludicrously exaggerated Midnight Run, but midway through, Rodriguez suddenly scraps it in order to go full Moonraker. So out goes an overacting Bichir and in comes Mel Gibson as an Elon Musk-alike arch-villain who seems to be treading right on the line between bemusement and amusement as his fires ray guns, wears a costume right out of the Jetsons and becomes a weird mixture of Darth Vader and Doctor Doom by the end of the film. Elsewhere, we find Sofia Vergara’s legitimately terrifying madam arguably have the most fun as she stalks after our emotion-free hero with one of the most disturbingly envisioned weaponry seen on screen as she not only wears the penis-shaped gun seen in previous Rodriguez joints (obviously fired with – how else – violent pelvic thrusts) but she also wears a mini gun bra that spews out rapid fire from the nipples.
However, all this insanity just doesn’t translate into entertainment; with the Cameleón subplot seeming like a thin excuse to stick Lady Gaga in a movie like shes just walking in from the set of the telephone music video and for a film this wacky, it strangely drags for a film where Trejo decapitates a crowd of goons by clinging to a twirling helicopter blade.
However, what is amusing is the sheer amount of “controversial” casting the film contains of actors with either a troubled history or one was due to hit at a later date with Gibson being joined by Charlie Sheen (his screen credit of “introducing Carlos Estévez” is legitimately the best joke in the film), Amber Heard and even an awkward cameo from Elon Musk himself and you feel that all it needed was an Armie Hammer or a James Franco to really round it off…
While I’m fully aware that Machete Kills is emphatically not supposed to be taken even remotely seriously, I can’t help but get the feeling that Rodriguez is squandering his talents making daffy sequels when at one point he was one of the most exciting names of the 90s – however, he insists on ending matters on an Empire Strikes Back style cliffhanger which means the proposed third installment, Machete Kills Again… In Space feels like more of a threat than a promise.
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