Series’ carnal humor bleeds out in second film.
2/5 stars
Robert Rodriguez’s “Machete Kills” is the sequel to the 2010 film “Machete,” which in turn was based on a fake trailer that played at the beginning of the 2007 double feature “Grindhouse.” The first film is an enjoyable romp in carnage and excess, but the sequel is excessive, overlong, silly and downright boring. The plot, if you can call it that, has Machete (Danny Trejo) being recruited by the President of the United States (Charlie Sheen billed by his real name, Carlos Estevez) to disarm a missile that is aimed right at Washington, D.C. The detonator is attached to the heart of madman Marcos Mendez (Oscar nominee Demian Bichir), and if he is killed, the missile will launch. Machete must transport him to the United States to find the only scientist who can disarm the detonator. Along the way many people try and thwart his mission, including Madame Desdemona (Sofía Vergara), the owner of a whorehouse and a machine gun bra, El Camaleón, an assassin with many disguises (played by a number of actors), and Luther Voz (Oscar winner Mel Gibson), a ruthless businessman attempting to launch a shuttle into space.
There is no reason for this film to run 107 minutes. The joke worked best as a three-minute fake trailer. Stretching it into a feature film once worked surprisingly well although that film wore out its welcome after the hour mark. The sequel is the loopiest incarnation of the series, and the gag has ceased to be amusing. The sequel would have worked better as an Adult Swim television series on Cartoon Network in eleven-minute episodes. Too often, the film feels like a direct-to-DVD rip-off of “Austin Powers” with buckets of blood and gore. While the fake trailer and the first film had a grungy, grainy aesthetic like the cheap exploitation films of the ’70s and ’80s they are paying homage to, the sequel is too bright and colorful and full of terrible CGI blood and gore. It looks cheap by today’s standards, like an Adult Swim show.
Violence done with computer effects is hardly ever effective because it never looks real. The yuck factor is lost when all the decapitations, shootings, and stabbing produce geysers of digital blood. The violence becomes like a video game. Even if the violence is ludicrous and over-the-top, practical effects pack a visceral punch that CGI rarely does.
Trejo is perfect as Machete because he plays him deadly serious and never winks at the camera. The problem is that he is surrounded by such lunacy that the deadpan humor fails. Like the first film, the sequel has an equally eclectic cast including Amber Heard, Lady Gaga, Jessica Alba, Cuba Gooding Jr., Vanessa Hudgens, Walton Goggins, Tom Savini, and Rodriguez regular, Antonio Banderas. Most of them are wasted in brief cameos where the joke is basically that they are in “Machete Kills.”
The film begins with a fake trailer for “Machete Kills Again … In Space!” and the film ends setting up that second sequel. “Machete Kills” has done extremely poorly at the box office, so hopefully Machete will stay earthbound and out of cinemas. “Machete” is dead.