Machete Kills is probably one of the most insanely over-the-top and ridiculously fun movies I’ve seen in a very long time. This is a film that looked at the first Machete movie and said, “Yea, I can top that.” And it did.
Deciding early on to ignore any tenuous basis in reality the previous installment may have considered having, Machete Kills also drops the political underpinnings to throw its title character into a vast and complicated web of international espionage and global terrorism on an apocalyptic scale.
Machete Kills sees Danny Trejo’s Machete heading down to Mexico on orders of the president (Charlie Sheen, billed under his real name Carlos Estevez) to take out Mendez, a psychotic drug lord (Demian Bichir, of Weeds and a ton of Spanish language stuff you probably haven’t seen) with a nuclear warhead pointed at Washington. Unfortunately when he gets there it turns out the missile is tied to Mendez’s heart and if he dies it launches automatically, so Machete has to take Mendez back to America to find the guy who built the device so he can disarm it but everyone in their path wants Mendez dead.
Take a breath.
And then the story gets crazy.
With a hit squad in Luchador masks, an all-girl gang working of a brothel and, well, the entire third act, Robert Rodriguez has made the Saints Row movie we all thought we’d never see. And I’m not even kidding. Machete gets a gun that turns people inside out. It’s exactly as awesome as it sounds.
Though apparently the movie isn’t for everyone. The guy sitting next to me kept letting out these loud, exaggerated sighs of exasperation every time something crazy would happen, almost as if he wanted everybody around to hear him rolling his eyes. I guess some people are just allergic to fun. How else could you explain someone not enjoying absolutely every moment that Sofia Vergara and Mel Gibson are on screen, especially when they make time for the return of a much-loved Rodriguez prop.
But if you like the idea of Danny Trejo spending 107 minutes finding new, interesting and often very funny ways to kill people, then this is a movie for you.
Basically, if you read this site, then this is a movie for you.
I give it 8.5 LUDICROUS WEAPONS out of 10.
