I don’t know of another movie franchise that I wish would continue than Machete. It started out as a trailer in the Grindhouse double-feature. Then it became its own little fun exploitation action movie. Then it got a sequel that opens with a trailer for the third movie, somewhat spoiling how the second film would end. It was as though director Robert Rodriguez was planning on making Machete a long-running series. It’s a shame that hasn’t happened, too. It’s been over ten years since Machete Kills came out, so the possibility of continuing the story with the same actors is getting smaller and smaller. Still, none of us can be too disappointed with what we already got from Rodriguez because Machete and Machete Kills are two fun, explosive, and exploitative action movies.

Pros

More of the cheesy, bloody action and comedy
Jessica Alba is much less involved
Actors are hamming it up to the point of not being kosher

Cons

Dates itself with certain cameos
Amber Heard
The Chameleon still feels a little underutilized by the end
Not much of the exploitation style outside of the opening trailer

Plot & Thoughts

Machete (Danny Trejo) is continuing his fight against evil with his partner Sartana (Jessica Alba). The two of them manage to bust a weapons smuggling operation by the border. Things do not go as planned, however, as masked men arrive at the operation and Sartana is executed by a man wearing a luchador mask and wielding a sci-fi gun. Machete survives the ordeal but is knocked unconscious. Before long, he’s brought before the President of the United States (Charlie Sheen a.k.a. Carlos Esteves, according to the film). He has a job to eliminate a cartel boss named Mendez (Demian Bichir) who has recently come into possession of a nuclear device. Determined to find Sartana’s killer, Machete agrees. It becomes a wild ride of him encountering one zany person after another as he goes from assassin to guardian and uncovers a plot to destroy the world.

The less you know about what happens in this movie before watching, the better. It takes a lot of sudden twists and turns that caught me off guard more than once. That isn’t to say the script is tightly written or that the plot is extremely complex. Each act is completely absurd and gets more outlandish as the movie goes on. The action itself is still very ridiculous and most of the effects look terrible, but that’s on-brand for a Machete film. You don’t expect the make-up or special effects to look good when it’s meant to be a cheap, exploitationish film by Robert Rodriguez, so I wouldn’t call that a con. Still, my tastes demand a few more jump cuts, some grainy film, bad dubbing, and cheap sets to make this closer to the griminess of Planet Terror or the original Machete trailer. Some of that style is here, but it’s much more toned down.

Where the movie makes up for its style is in how the actors all just go overboard in their performances. Mel Gibson and Demian Bichir are the two who really ham it up for the camera in particular. Both actors chew up every scene they’re in, and it doesn’t end with them. The character called La Chameleon is also a fun one that involves several actors doing some silly faces and funny lines. Though, I think the character ends up a little underutilized by the end because they get built up a lot throughout the film only to be removed well before the finale. Where the acting falls in quality is with a particular addition to the cast. We got very little flat acting from Jessica Alba but, in exchange, we got Amber Heard. Admittedly, I didn’t hear many of her lines because someone next to me on the couch was booing whenever she came on screen, but what I did hear did very little to impress me.

All in all, this will be a pretty short review because the alternative would be me talking about each scene and its highlights that I enjoyed which would make it exceptionally long. I’d rather not spoil the events of the film because it does a great job of replicating the wildness of the first movie and amping it up. It’s a fitting continuation that keeps with the same tones that were established all the way back in Grindhouse as a simple spoof of an exploitation movie trailer. With how so many other film franchises have failed or been practically killed by modern storytelling, I wouldn’t be hopeful for any third entry in a movie franchise. If you look at what the Machete films are, though, it seems like an impossibility for them to become “modernized” like so many other shows and movies, which leaves me with hope. If the third film is ever actually made and continues with the trajectory of wild and absurd fun with tits and guns, it could potentially be the best Star Wars movie to be made since 1980.

TL;DR

Machete Kills goes off in some wild directions but does not stray from what made the original film so much fun. It’s full of surprising and hilarious moments with some genuinely shocking scenes. There are a lot of explosions, dismembered henchmen, blood, guts, boobs, and action. I have my fingers crossed that Robert Rodriguez and Danny Trejo manage to fulfill their destiny and make the best film trilogy about a violent, machete-wielding Mexican superhero.

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