I ranked “Machete Kills” (the sequel to Machete, itself inspired by a fake trailer in front of Robert Rodriguez’s half of Grindhouse, still the only Quentin Tarantino movie to not make its budget back at the box office) as one of my least anticipated movies of the Fall, and it looks like audiences agreed with me since nobody went to see it this weekend. It’s a little heartening when great movies like Captain Phillips and Gravity soar at the box office and Machete Kills doesn’t since it’s so often the other way around…sniff, sniff…I’m getting a little misty eyed thinking about.
Robert Rodriguez still hasn’t figured out that making a dead-on homage to a crappy movie and making an actual crappy movie aren’t really different.
What Works: Not much. The movie thinks it’s more fun than it is, which is why touches like a clone army or a shape shifting assassin don’t deliver like Rodriguez clearly thinks they do. I do think Demian Birchir (as a goofy drug lord slash revolutionary with a nuclear countdown clock wired to his chest) is playing a vastly different role than he normally does, and “The Chameleon” (that shape shifting assassin) is fun in the early stages when Walton Goggins is playing him, but that’s about it. Also, the girl from Spy Kids, Alexa Vega, is now pretty hot and Rodriguez seems really pleased with this fact since he puts her in Jessica Alba’s old outfits from Sin City.
What Doesn’t Work: Sofia Vergara in a machine gun bra should work, but doesn’t. Mel Gibson as the bad guy in a Mexican exploitation film should also be more fun than it is. The opening fake trailer for “Machete Kills…In Space” which also is the end of the movie is another joke that never made me laugh. It’s hard to say exactly why I had so little actual fun at Machete Kills and I guess it’s because the joke is beyond played out and only Rodriguez doesn’t seem to get that.
What I Would have Done Differently: I don’t think it helps that he doesn’t honestly know what a grind house film is, despite the fact that he does nothing but romanticize (and fetishize) them. There’s no real female nudity in Machete Kills and the lighting looks more like a William Sonoma catalogue than the grainy visuals these films are famous for. Grindhouse movies are about giving people exactly what they want, like the second Sofia Vergara walks onto the screen, you know she’ll be naked no later than ten minutes later. Well, that doesn’t happen. There’s a lot you might want to see in Machete Kills that doesn’t happen, and none of it includes “Machete Kills…in Space.” It’s just another sign of how uninspired this film is that literally the only fake trailer they could muster up is for one that they hope will be the sequel to this one.