The U.S. government recruits Machete to battle his way through Mexico in order to take down an arms dealer who looks to launch a weapon into space.
Robert Rodriguez returns to his Machete series coming off the latest instalment in the successful Spy Kids franchise All the Time in the World. Rodriguez is a busy man with Sin City: A Dame to Kill For already in post-production and eyeing off a 2014 release but for now we have Machete Kills with Danny Trejo in the lead role.
Machete Kills carries on the same sensibilities that were established in the original, all sense of political correctness is left at the door as the film delves into preposterous over the top tongue in cheek sex appeal and violence as Danny Trejo carves his way through one end of the film to the other.
Tonally Machete Kills wanders around from genre to genre, switching things up between action, comedy, buddy cop, and of all things to science fiction and it does so in a manner of over the top fun that is just so enjoyable to watch.
Pacing wise it repeats some of the short comings of the original film but to a lesser degree, the film is invigorated for the bulk of the running time however things slow down just a little too much during the second act. This will be easily forgiven and forgotten as things ramp up into a finale full of laughs and bloody violence.
Machete Kills is full of creative death sequences, despite repeating some similar kills once or twice the gory blood splattering action never wears thin, it’s ridiculous and laughable and doesn’t pretend to be anything else. All sense of reality is left aside for sheer entertainment value and in this case that approach works perfectly.
Without this particular cast, much of the humour wouldn’t work or at least wouldn’t work so well. Across the board the cast were excellent and are clearly having a lot of fun delivering their performances. Mel Gibson is a standout and really lifts the energy of the film whenever he’s on screen, Charlie Sheen (credited as Carlos Eztevez) as the President is hilarious before he even delivers one line of dialogue and Sofia Vergara might deliver the most over the top performance in the film. The only downside to all of this is the cast threatens to but never quite sidelines Danny Trejo’s performance as Machete whose use of facial expression and minimalistic dialogue proves effective and pays off at the right moments.
It’s safe to say that Machete Kills isn’t going to win over anyone who wasn’t a fan of Machete, if that type of film wasn’t your thing back in 2010 then there’s nothing here that will change your view, in fact it’ll probably worsen it. If you liked Machete, or mostly liked it then Machete Kills ups the ante in all the right ways and loses some of the baggage that held the previous film back at times.
This film is going to leave Machete fans wanting more, I’m giving it 7 out of 10 stars, you can catch Machete Kills on screens from 24 October 2013.
