Review - "Machete Kills"

There have been several films I have heard everyone get excited about over the last few weeks, but the movie that I really wanted to see was Machete Kills. Evidently I was the only one. The Grindhouse sequel squeeked out a measly $3.7 million at the box office and is probably going to be called one of the biggest flops of the year.  Let’s explore why.

The premise of the first Machete was simple. A big Mexican guy (played by Danny Trejo) beats the crap out of a bunch of people in increasing gruesome ways. It was based on a fake trailer that ran with Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse experiment. The weird thing is that none of the movies I have mentioned in this review have been wildly successful, but they keep getting made because Robert Rodriguez literally shoots them in his garage (it’s a really big garage) and works as the Director, Cinematographer, Editor, Composer and Janitor (remember, it’s his garage). What made Machete so appealing was the quirky satire, solid action scenes, a barrage of celebrity cameos, and political commentary that was thinly veiled but not shoved down our throats. It also premiered right around the time of the Arizona ID controversy, so it had some social relevance.

Machete Kills has a more ambitious story with lacking execution. Rodriguez makes Machete less of an outlaw and more of a secret agent. The beginning feels like an early ‘70s James Bond movie with pretty girls running around and a bunch of knife fights and gun fights.  Later on it becomes a fugitive-on-the-run movie and by the end it shifts into a late ‘70s James Bond movie with futuristic technology, people in jumpsuits, and villains who can monologue with the best of them.  There are about a dozen different celebrities who pop in and out of the movie because they just wanted to hang out for a couple of days, chew all the scenery in site, and move on. These characters are fun but the film really needs more Machete. Trejo spends too much time reacting to everybody else and not enough time being proactive and taking the fight to the bad guys. I wanted to see him flex and get angry. I do not remember a single one-liner. That is a problem.

The saddest thing about the failure of Machete Kills is that now it is unlikely that we will get to see the planned sequel, Machete Kills Again… In Space. Doesn’t that sound amazing? Unfortunately, one can only wonder what could have been.