I know, I know... I'm about two weeks too late to put this review up. Blame the lateness on this flu followed by the sinus infection afterwards. Better late than never I suppose.
Cast:
Danny Trejo as Machete CortezMichelle Rodriguez as Luz / Shé
Sofía Vergara as Madame Desdemona
Amber Heard as Miss San AntonioLady Gaga as La Camaleón
Antonio Banderas as El Camaleón 4
Cuba Gooding Jr. as El Camaleón 2
Jessica Alba as Sartana Rivera
Demián Bichir as Mendez
Mel Gibson as Luther Voz
Carlos Estévez (Charlie Sheen) as President Rathcock
Walton Goggins as El Camaleón 1
Vanessa Hudgens as Cereza
Alexa Vega as KillJoy
Marko Zaror as Zaror
Tom Savini as Osiris Amanpour
William Sadler as Sheriff Doakes
Julio Oscar Mechoso as Chepo
Billy Blair as Billy Blair
Samuel Davis as Clebourne
Vincent Fuentes as Cabrito Cook
Elle Lamont as Dollface
Felix Sabates as Doc Felix
Electra and Elise Avellan as Nurse Mona and Nurse Lisa
Marci Madison as Nurse Fine
Elon Musk as Himself
Plot: (FULL Spoilers)
The film is preceded by a fake trailer for Machete Kills Again... In Space!, which features the titular hero on an intergalactic mission, starring Danny Trejo, Michelle Rodriguez, Alexa Vega, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber as a robot named Bleep (which Machete destroys), and Leonardo DiCaprio as "The Man in the Silver Mask" (with the sub-note that the actor playing the role is subject to change).The actual film starts off with Machete Cortez (Danny Trejo) and Sartana Rivera (Jessica Alba) attempting to capture weapon dealers who have been supplying the drug cartels, but the dealers are protected by mercenaries, who murder Sartana and severely injure Machete, who is then arrested by corrupt Sheriff Doakes (William Sadler) and Deputy Clebourne (Samuel Davis). Before Doakes can execute him, Machete is released and taken to President Rathcock (Carlos Estévez), who offers Machete United States citizenship if he eliminates Marcos Mendez (Demián Bichir), a psychopath who is threatening to fire a nuclear missile at Washington, D.C. if the American government doesn't intervene in the rampant corruption of the government of Mexico.
Machete agrees and travels to San Antonio, where he meets his handler, Blanca Vasquez (Amber Heard), a beauty pageant competitor also known as "Miss San Antonio", who seduces Machete before sending him to Acapulco to meet a young woman, Cereza (Vanessa Hudgens), who can lead him to Mendez. Madame Desdemona (Sofía Vergara), who attempts to kill Machete before he escapes with Cereza. She takes him to Mendez's associate, Zaror (Marko Zaror), who kills Cereza before taking Machete to Mendez's base of operations.Machete finds her in a brothel run by her mother,
There, Machete learns that Mendez has wired the missile's launch device to his heart. Machete escapes, kills Zaror and his men and captures Mendez, whom he intents to escort to the United States before going after the man who provided him with the missile. Shortly thereafter, a hit is put on their heads, and Machete is target by Madame Desdemona and her prostitute assassins, Sheriff Doakes and also a shapeshifting hitman, El Camaleón. In the process, he learns that Mendez is an ex-secret agent who tried to expose his corrupt superiors, only to be betrayed and forced to watch his family being tortured. The trauma drove him insane and led him to join forces with the missile's creator.
Machete and Mendez continuously evade Madame Desdemona and El Camaleón, and kill Sheriff Doakes and Deputy Clebourne before reaching the border, only to be caught by a reborn Zaror and the same mercenaries who killed Sartana. Zaror decapitates Mendez and takes Machete to meet his benefactor, corrupt businessman Luther Voz (Mel Gibson). Voz shows Machete Mendez's beating heart, preserved in a jar, and informs him of his plan to manipulate extremists throughout the world to detonate nuclear weapons while he and whoever chooses to join him escapes in a spaceship to rebuild society in Space. Voz also reveals that Zaror is one of the many genetically-engineered super-soldier clones he has created to assist him. Machete then escapes with help from Luz (Michelle Rodriguez), who had heard about the hit on Machete. She informs him that the only one who can disarm Mendez's heart is Machete's old enemy Osiris Amanpour. Machete contacts Miss San Antonio, who instructs her to meet her at a rendezvous point.
Arriving there, Machete is betrayed by Miss San Antonio, who is in league with Voz, and escapes into the desert, where El Camaleón tries to kill him one last time before being accidentally killed by racist border patrol. Machete then reunites with Luz and her group, the Network, and they infiltrate a fundraiser at Voz's base of operations. In the ensuring firefight, Osiris is killed by Voz before being able to disarm Mendez's heart. Machete fights Voz and disfigures him, forcing Voz to use a metallic silver mask. Meanwhile, Luz fights Miss San Antonio, who blinds Luz's other eye before Luz stabs her in the heart. Luz is then ambushed, frozen in Carbonite and loaded in Voz's ship.
Machete rides the missile and disarms it in mid-air, while Voz boards the ship and departs with the Zaror clones and Luz. Machete is rescued in the ocean by President Rathcock, who assigns him the mission to follow Voz to Space and kill him. Machete then departs to Station X in Earth's orbit, where he is given a laser machete to start his mission.
In a post-credits scene an outtake from the "pussy punch" scene is included followed by a shot of President Rathcock in front of a space background inquisitively brandishing two of Voz's guns (the molecular disruptor and the same pistol used to kill Sartana) before firing wildly at an off-screen target.
The Verdict:
From the second the movie started with the "joke" trailer for Machete Kills Again... In Space, I was literally telling myself that would pay to see that, regardless of how silly it looked. Boy, little did I know that was pretty much the teaser for the NEXT sequel!
I have read some of the other reviews on this film and they have gone from entirely negative to lukewarm on its reception for the opening weekend. I feel that this film needs to be split up and discussed in two separate parts in order to do it justice - the stellar first half and the lackluster clusterfuck of a final half of the film.
I loved the first half of the film with Machete finding himself having to trust and work together with the dual-personalities of Mendes. Bichir really stole the show for me throughout the first half of the film with his uncanny ability to bring those multiple personalities to life. El (and La) Camaleon, along with Desdemona and her brothel of female bounty hunters were all interesting enough. Call me biased but I could listen to Sofia Vergara's heavenly voice all day. Hell, she could sit back and just read stuff out of the phone book and I'm happy. I had to laugh that Vanessa Hudgens' role in this film is more forgettable than the minor part that she played in Sucker Punch. Lady Gaga as La Camaleon is so crazy that words can't express how unique that was. It played up her personality and I would love to see her come back in a different role in a sequel.
I just don't fathom why Robert Rodriguez decided to deter the film into science fiction craziness in the last half of the film. You would think that those previously mentioned characters would be more than enough to carry this film from start to finish but no, it takes a hard turn into the bizarre in the last half. We'll discuss that clusterfuck in a moment but I want to focus on more of the good in the first half of the film. I think one of the comments I read on Facebook said it best - "This film is loaded with some of the most gorgeous women in the world and it's almost a sin that this is even humanly possible." It's like hottie overload to the point you almost can't comprehend that this is possible, but then all of the over-the-top action and humor reminds you that this is a film that is not made to be taken seriously in the first place.
That brings us to the latter half of the film, where Mel Gibson makes his villainous debut as Luther Voz. I honestly was expecting Gibson to come off as cheesy as Steven Seagal in the original Machete as Rogelio Torrez, but he managed to surprise me in his portrayal as a villain. The film lost me when it detoured almost completely from the narrative of the first half of the film and ventured into science fiction territory with a heavy Star Wars influence with a sprinkle of Voz being a modern-day Americanized Doctor Doom. Voz even remarks at one point, "Sue me, I'm a Star Wars fan." While I can understand why Robert Rodriguez decided to throw a curve ball into this secret agent/mercenary-for-hire style of narrative, the only thing he managed to do was create a film that has a huge identity crisis. I thought the plot for the first half of the film would have worked perfectly, given if the characters introduced in the first
half were given more air-time on their background stories and room to develop. I loved Camaleon's journey across Mexico, but it seem the film completely forgot about Desdemona and her vixens after Machete and Mendez crossed the border. I doubt they would have been gunned down as easily as Camaleon was. Besides, his/her demise was mostly to blame on the wrong disguise at the worse time ever.
Another issue I had in this last half was why did Luz and the rest of her rebellion group wait that long to come to Machete's aid when they were monitoring his activities? She could have spared Machete the drama of being double crossed by Miss San Antonio and could have provided an easier escape route for Machete and Mendez. It just seemed like bad pacing and writing at that point of the narrative. The viewers already know that Machete was still working with Sartana, so why wouldn't he still be in contact with Luz too? It just seemed really odd to me. Speaking of Luz, I had to laugh when Miss San Antonio took out her remaining eye in their climatic catfight. What's next? Is Shé (see what I did there?) going to have bionic eye implants in the inevitable sequel?
Machete Kills ends with nothing really coming to a close. Mendes' heart bomb, along with the other in several world leaders, have been defused but Voz escapes to his space station orbiting the Earth with Luz in tow as a hostage. I remember walking out of the theater, asking myself, "What the HELL did I just watch?" At the end of the day, this is a film that doesn't take itself seriously at all. If you're looking for a film that's all action and full of some of the most beautiful women assembled in a film in recent memory without barely any cohesive threads to hold it together in terms of a narrative, then this is definitely up your alley. If you're looking for something else with a bit more substance in your typical action-flick, then I suggest you look elsewhere.
With this film clearly being incomplete until Machete Kills Again... In Space debuts in another 2-3 years, I have to give this a low score as a stand-alone film. There's some fun to had here, but I can only give this film a 6.25 out 10.
Now that the review part of this article is out of the way, let's have some fun...
I loved the first half of the film with Machete finding himself having to trust and work together with the dual-personalities of Mendes. Bichir really stole the show for me throughout the first half of the film with his uncanny ability to bring those multiple personalities to life. El (and La) Camaleon, along with Desdemona and her brothel of female bounty hunters were all interesting enough. Call me biased but I could listen to Sofia Vergara's heavenly voice all day. Hell, she could sit back and just read stuff out of the phone book and I'm happy. I had to laugh that Vanessa Hudgens' role in this film is more forgettable than the minor part that she played in Sucker Punch. Lady Gaga as La Camaleon is so crazy that words can't express how unique that was. It played up her personality and I would love to see her come back in a different role in a sequel.
I just don't fathom why Robert Rodriguez decided to deter the film into science fiction craziness in the last half of the film. You would think that those previously mentioned characters would be more than enough to carry this film from start to finish but no, it takes a hard turn into the bizarre in the last half. We'll discuss that clusterfuck in a moment but I want to focus on more of the good in the first half of the film. I think one of the comments I read on Facebook said it best - "This film is loaded with some of the most gorgeous women in the world and it's almost a sin that this is even humanly possible." It's like hottie overload to the point you almost can't comprehend that this is possible, but then all of the over-the-top action and humor reminds you that this is a film that is not made to be taken seriously in the first place.
That brings us to the latter half of the film, where Mel Gibson makes his villainous debut as Luther Voz. I honestly was expecting Gibson to come off as cheesy as Steven Seagal in the original Machete as Rogelio Torrez, but he managed to surprise me in his portrayal as a villain. The film lost me when it detoured almost completely from the narrative of the first half of the film and ventured into science fiction territory with a heavy Star Wars influence with a sprinkle of Voz being a modern-day Americanized Doctor Doom. Voz even remarks at one point, "Sue me, I'm a Star Wars fan." While I can understand why Robert Rodriguez decided to throw a curve ball into this secret agent/mercenary-for-hire style of narrative, the only thing he managed to do was create a film that has a huge identity crisis. I thought the plot for the first half of the film would have worked perfectly, given if the characters introduced in the first
half were given more air-time on their background stories and room to develop. I loved Camaleon's journey across Mexico, but it seem the film completely forgot about Desdemona and her vixens after Machete and Mendez crossed the border. I doubt they would have been gunned down as easily as Camaleon was. Besides, his/her demise was mostly to blame on the wrong disguise at the worse time ever.
Another issue I had in this last half was why did Luz and the rest of her rebellion group wait that long to come to Machete's aid when they were monitoring his activities? She could have spared Machete the drama of being double crossed by Miss San Antonio and could have provided an easier escape route for Machete and Mendez. It just seemed like bad pacing and writing at that point of the narrative. The viewers already know that Machete was still working with Sartana, so why wouldn't he still be in contact with Luz too? It just seemed really odd to me. Speaking of Luz, I had to laugh when Miss San Antonio took out her remaining eye in their climatic catfight. What's next? Is Shé (see what I did there?) going to have bionic eye implants in the inevitable sequel?Machete Kills ends with nothing really coming to a close. Mendes' heart bomb, along with the other in several world leaders, have been defused but Voz escapes to his space station orbiting the Earth with Luz in tow as a hostage. I remember walking out of the theater, asking myself, "What the HELL did I just watch?" At the end of the day, this is a film that doesn't take itself seriously at all. If you're looking for a film that's all action and full of some of the most beautiful women assembled in a film in recent memory without barely any cohesive threads to hold it together in terms of a narrative, then this is definitely up your alley. If you're looking for something else with a bit more substance in your typical action-flick, then I suggest you look elsewhere.
With this film clearly being incomplete until Machete Kills Again... In Space debuts in another 2-3 years, I have to give this a low score as a stand-alone film. There's some fun to had here, but I can only give this film a 6.25 out 10.
Now that the review part of this article is out of the way, let's have some fun...
Yeah... think about that for a second for a good ol' fashioned mindfuck... (Whistles) Alexa Vega really came along nicely after all these years. As for Amber Heard, c'mon, most of us guys already know she's a hottie given her resume nowadays, especially after her appearance in Drive Angry made her a no-brainer to be included in a film like this.
I have to wonder... Since Danny Trejo appears as a janitor in Modern Family with Sofia Vergara on a few episodes, is that their day jobs or cover while not on assignments? There you go, folks - more mindfuckery.
I have to wonder... Since Danny Trejo appears as a janitor in Modern Family with Sofia Vergara on a few episodes, is that their day jobs or cover while not on assignments? There you go, folks - more mindfuckery.
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