Machete Kills Review
Posted by Stephen Lambrechts - 10/10/2013
At the beginning of his career, Robert Rodriguez was praised for making low budget films that looked much more expensive than they actually were. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line that talent seems to have flipped the other way around. Machete Kills is the latest in a string of B-movie homages by the ‘one-man film industry’ that finds Rodriguez digging himself deeper into his self-created hole. After the much-hyped, but only mildly amusing Machete (on which he was co-director alongside Ethan Maniquis), Rodriguez is back as the sole director of Machete Kills, a movie that fails to live up to even the modest thrills of its predecessor.
This time, Machete (Danny Trejo) is recruited by the President of the United States (Charlie Sheen, who in the film’s funniest gag, is billed under his birth name, Carlos Estevez) to assassinate a radical Mexican revolutionary named Mendez (Demián Bichir, mugging uncontrollably). Mendez however, is just a puppet for the crazy billionaire and criminal mastermind Luther Voz (Mel Gibson), a man with his own ridiculous agenda involving a missile pointed at Washington and a space ship. While all this is happening, Machete is also being tailed by the pissed-off Madame Desdemona (Sofia Vergara), as well as a face-swapping hitman called The Chameleon (whichever actor buddy of Rodriguez’s that was available at the time) and a Dolemite-esque racist, redneck Sheriff (William Sadler). If Machete has any hope of juggling all of these convoluted plot-threads, he’ll need help from Luz (Michelle Rodriguez, returning from the first flick with an eye-patch) and her rebellion.
The plot of Machete Kills is a hot mess filled with unnecessary side-stories and characters that contribute nothing to the film. Intolerable sidekicks are kept around for large chunks of the film and then discarded. One character is introduced and killed almost immediately, if only to introduce a whole bunch of other antagonists that serve no purpose other than to add to the general mayhem of the production. Worst of all, almost none of these plot-threads are tied up by the end. Machete Kills attempts its own Empire Strikes Back-style cliffhanger, dragging these already irritating threads into a future film (Machete Kills Again… In Space, teased with a trademark ‘fake trailer’ at the beginning of the film), though it’s hard to imagine audiences being enthused about it after seeing this one.
At times, Machete Kills manages to look cheaper than Rodriguez's micro-budget debut, El Mariachi. While the film is obviously going for a B-movie vibe, it’s doubtful that it intended to go quite this far. Gone is the exploitation-style ‘grindhouse’ aesthetic of the original film, replaced with a low-rent, campy James Bond feel. Think a budget version of Austin Powers, only desperately unfunny and filled with gratuitous f-bombs and CGI gore. Hell, there isn’t even any nudity to distract us from the lameness of its attempts at comedy this time around.
There is a sense that Rodriguez and Co. are attempting to simultaneously mock and pay tribute to the cheesy films they grew up on, but simply making your film look as terrible and cheap as possible doesn’t work. Scott Sanders’ Black Dynamite worked because it was a perfect satire of ‘70s blaxploitation movies, from the cinematography, dialogue and over-the-top acting, right down to the period setting. Even Robert Rodriguez’s own Grindhouse segment, Planet Terror, had a visual style that was maybe not entirely authentic to the films it paid homage to, but at least felt like a heightened version of them. Machete Kills however, is shot with the panache of a Nickelodeon TV movie, with its flat lighting and artless framing on boring sets. The film’s finale looks like it was shot at a Moonraker-themed high school formal.
The large cast is also a mixed bag. There are many big names here, though most are tasked with awkward dialogue and strange editing that does them no favours. Most of their performances seem stilted and wooden, with a few exceptions. Danny Trejo has his steely-faced routine down pat, and Michelle Rodriguez is great once again, though even she can’t escape some clunky one-liners. Amber Heard also does her best as Machete’s handler, Miss San Antonio. Tom Savini also returns from the first film, and not only is he quite good, but he is also one of the only characters in the film with a proper (albeit small) character arc. Lady Gaga’s much-anticipated screen-debut is sadly lacklustre, with the monsterific singer posing like a femme fatale and awkwardly swearing through each of her scenes.
Thankfully, Mel Gibson brings some much-needed charisma to the film, proving that no matter what may happen in his personal life, the guy is a genuine star that can lift an entire film with his presence alone. Also, the person who decided that Walton Goggins should dub the majority of Cuba Gooding Jr.’s dialogue during his brief screen time should have their intestines fed into a helicopter rotor. Metaphorically, of course.
Much like Rodriguez’s other worst film, Once Upon A Time In Mexico, Machete Kills has the feel of a movie that was made up as it was being shot, revolving around the actors’ schedules, and whatever random ideas that Rodriguez and his writer, Kyle Ward, managed to shove into the creative blender that morning. Quite frankly, Sin City: A Dame To Kill For can't come soon enough. It's understandable that Rodriguez enjoys having the freedom to do what he wants, but it's hard to argue that this freedom hasn't affected his cinematic output. If you were to compare Machete Kills to his wonderful, early cult classics Desperado and From Dusk Till Dawn (two personal favourites), it would be like holding a finger painting up next to the Mona Lisa. Machete Kills aims for 'so bad, it's good', but ends up just plain bad. Hopefully this is just a misstep and Rodriguez finds his mojo again on the next Sin City film.
★★
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