Movie Reviews

Machete Kills is the sequel to a movie that started out as a joke trailer for the Rodriguez/Tarantino collaboration that was Grindhouse. Whereas the first movie was funny enough and came with lots of action, blood and beautiful women, it already wasn’t as good as the spoof trailer. Machete Kills comes with even more action, more blood and more beautiful women and is even less funny.

Danny Trejo is back as Machete. This time around the president of the USA (Charlie Sheen) asks him to track down a psychopath (Demian Bichir) who wants to blow up Washington DC with a nuclear bomb. Behind the scenes though there is an even bigger bad guy pulling the strings, an evil arms dealer played by Mel Gibson. While Machete gets some help from his handler Miss San Antonio (Amber Heard) and his old friend Luz (Michelle Rodriguez), there’s also plenty of people who are trying to kill him including a face-changing assassin played alternately by Cuba Gooding Jr, Lady Gaga, and Antonio Banderas. This whole sub-plot was completely unnecessary and just an easy way for Rodriguez to smuggle in a couple more big names. By the time the final confrontation between Machete and Gibson’s character takes place, this movie had all but worn me out completely.

Of course, the whole idea is that this is supposed to be a bad movie. But with 107 minutes of pretty much non-stop action and lots of ‘Machete don’t do’ jokes, the fabric of this one is stretched way too far and the campy highlights are too few and far between. There’s another fake trailer here for Machete Kills Again… In Space… let’s hope Rodriguez doesn’t get it in his head to actually make that movie as well because let’s face it, Machete don’t do feature movies well.