Machete Kills

The humor is subtle and much of it is too subtle for the average viewer as I see from the posts below. If one views it as a "Kill Bill" kind of silliness that looks at the Mexican/Us border, then one may enjoy it.

The movie is not self-indulgent, rather it takes common stereotypes and puts them into funny situations. It has dark humor at times and makes no apologies for making fun of everything. It takes on many issues in a light-hearted way, but for some reason, it is not listed as a comedy. It, however, is a comedy.

The hero is a clever native American which is it's twist. The movie's plot is not predictable and it is filled with guns and shoot ups. It is a modern comedy that pokes fun at US politics and all its insincerity.

Watch it. Do not take it seriously as an action flick and allow it to be the comedy that it is.

Wild , bloody , violent and deliriously entertaining follow-up yarn . Thrilling action film with plenty of shootouts , explosion , some hilarious touches and lots of violence . 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, Mel Gibson, Alexa Vega, Lady Gaga, Antonio Banderas, Walton Goggins , Cuba Gooding Jr., Vanessa Hudgens , Justin Bieber as a robot named Bleep which Machete eliminates , 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 U. S. government recruits Machete , a deadpan Danny Trejo, to battle his way through Mexico in order to take down an arms dealer who looks to launch a weapon into space. Trained to kill. Left for dead. Back for more. He was given an offer he couldn't refuse...They just confronted with the wrong Mexican!.If you're going to hire Machete to kill the bad guy, you better make damn sure the bad guy isn't you! .He knows the score. He gets the women. And he kills the bad guys! .Yesterday He Was a Decent Man Living a Decent Life. Now He is a Brutal Savage Who Must Slaughter to Stay Alive. A Pissed Off Mexican Out to Settle a Score.

This is a zestful action film with eccentric all-star-cast , striking set-pieces and irony . Nail-biting and lavishly produced movie packs hilarious scenes , tension , chills , thrills , terror , sadism, tongue-in cheek and lots of blood and gore , including stabbing , slicing , stabbing , quartering- courtesy of Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger ; they create a truly creepy make-up and fantastic special effects . Machete appearance delivers the goods with hair raising thrills and plenty of non-stopped-acting in which he destroys loads of heinous hoodlums . The astonishing killings are gruesomely executed and grisly graphic . There is more than enough preposterous pleasure to be had from Robert Rodriguez's expertise with the action set-pieces and absurdist approach to the story of the mythical Machete . This movie is in similar style than Quentin Tarantino's ¨Death Proof¨and ¨Planet Terror¨both tales form a diptych titled 'Grindhouse', as contains more amusement action and fun . More a sequel than a loose , biggest budget remake , this second Machete installment feature may be a rambling derivative exercice in gratuitous violence , but anyway it results to be a gleeful entertainment and really amusing . Motifs and plot points are hardly explained and certain roles are extremely ridiculous and so sketchly drawn that it is difficult to work out why they are there .

Various familiar players acting , many of them Rodriguez's regulars , such as : Sofia Vergara , Antonio Banderas , Cuba Gooding Jr , Vanessa Hudgens, Alexa Vega , Michelle Rodriguez , Amber Heard, Charlie Sheen , William Sadler , Julio Oscar Mechoso and the Avellan twins as two nurses , they're niece-in-law of Robert Rodriguez and wife, Elizabet Avellan . Besides , appearing Tom Savini, the prestigious make-up artist who repeats his role from Machete I , but now as a good guy . Moving musical score , special cinematography , edition and nice direction by Robert Rodriguez himself . His big hit was Robert Rodriguez's Mariachi trilogy formed by ¨El Mariachi¨ 1992 with Carlos Gallardo , ¨Desperado¨ 1995 with Antonio Banderas , Salma Hayek , Cheech Marin, Quentin Tarantino , Steve Buscemi and ¨The Mexican¨ (2003) with Banderas , Hayek , Willem Defoe , Eva Mendes . Rating : 6/10 , an acceptable and tolerable sequel . The film will appeal to action/thriller fans with some humor and irony.

Let me start off by saying love love love the first Machete. I can watch it anytime... This one, not so much. Robert Rodriquez swung for the fences with this one and it missed. Some people will never ever say anything bad about the guy and some will genuinely like it, but to be honest.. it just didn't have that X factor the first Machete did. This time around Machete is more like a super hero. He is sent on a mission to Mexico by the President (excellent choice of casting Charlie Sheen, using his birth name of Carlos Esteves). But other than that, (and of course Danny Trejo and Michelle Rodriquez), the rest of the cast just didn't fit. The schizo Mexican revolutionary didn't fit, Cuba was completely out of place, wasn't really feeling Lady Gaga or Amber Heard (even though she is gorgeous) and the gorgeous Sophia Vegara was just a little too manic. But it really wasn't that.. the film just was kind of flat, even the action scenes weren't clicking. Maybe because they gave away too much in the previews. Maybe its because they made Machete inhuman.. All I know is that when I was in the theater, 3 people around me fell asleep and 4 people walked out a hour after the film started... AND it wasn't that many people in the theater. Gosh I wanted it to be so much better.. This is a rental, at best

First came "Grindhouse" (2007), a critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful ode to exploitation films of the 1970's & 1980's. Then came "Machete" (2010), an unapologetically violent spin off adapted by popular demand from one of the fake trailers that accompanied "Grindhouse".

Unlike "Grindhouse", "Machete" was a commercial success, making 2 1/2 times its money back in domestic grosses alone. Inevitably, there would be a sequel. Because of how much I enjoyed "Machete", I was looking forward to "Machete Kills" (2013).

Unfortunately, while the movie's predecessors were aware that they were both parodying and paying tribute to low budget schlock flicks, "Machete Kills" somehow forgets that fact. The over-the-top violence and sex is still there, but something still did not feel right as I was watching this film.

The movie starts out right as you get an allegedly fake trailer for "Machete Kills Again . . . In Space". In this "preview" (which may or may not actually get made in the near future), the film is grainy, scientifically unrealistic, and primarily fun to watch.

Then the movie begins, and the film is as clear as crystal, the first indication that the director, Robert Rodriguez, somehow forgot what he was parodying. Based on the casting of supporting characters, Rodriguez may have also intended "Machete Kills" more as a second chance for once-prominent actors with now-notorious reputations than a tongue-in-cheek tribute to his love for fun, low-budget cinema.

The original "Machete" was no masterpiece, but it was enjoyable to watch because Danny Trejo played an appealing bad-ass, and the narrative was solid. In "Machete Kills", Danny Trejo somehow doesn't seem to be into the character he made his own, keeping the same inexpressive face throughout as if he is already bored with playing the character.

The story in this movie is also too simplified and hackneyed to accommodate as many supporting characters as it does. There's a terrorist who is about to launch a nuclear missile from Mexico to Washington, D.C., and is one of those villains who doesn't know what he wants to do with the world once he takes it over.

While Trejo, Michelle Rodriguez, and others from the original movie make welcome returns to this sequel, so many characters are added to this story that their presence actually makes the story more confusing. There's a Miss Texas beauty pageant contestant (Amber Heard) who serves as both a femme fatale and almost an Agent Q to Machete, a brothel owner (Sofia Vergara) with an uninspired bra gun which has been done in countless movies and TV shows before, and a lone assassin who assumes many identities (including Lady Gaga) who wants to kill Machete for reasons the film doesn't seem to explain.

If you're going to accommodate that many characters, write a story where every character has more of a useful goal than "Kill the hero", or even "Make a clever cameo". While I thought it was clever to have Charlie Sheen be credited as Carlos Estevez (his birth name) in the beginning sequence, he served no purpose playing the President of the United States.

It's as if the screenwriters just said, "Hey, you know what would be funny? Let's have a formerly legitimate actor whose life is a train wreck play the President!" Sure, Sheen smokes, womanizes, and swears in his role, but those actions alone don't elicit more than a chuckle.

On the other hand, I bought into Mel Gibson playing Voz, the villainous operator of a weapons manufacturer who made the nuclear missile. Does Gibson's presence here show how fall the former A-lister has fallen? Maybe, but he still sold every line he spoke, and still showed his good acting days are not behind him.

As for the gratuitous violence, I was hoping for more irony in what I was watching. Machete doesn't seem to have more creative ways to use a large knife beside slashing it from right to left. Plus, any creative ways a nemesis dies seems to be ripped right from "The Itchy & Scratchy Show" cartoon on "The Simpsons".

If Robert Rodriguez decides to go ahead and make "Machete Kills Again . . . In Space", he needs to make sure there's enough room in the story for any celebrities whose careers he wants to revitalize. Plus, he needs to embrace the graininess of fun B-movies, and remember that even schlock fails without a coherent story.

Probably foremost, he also needs to make sure Danny Trejo actually wants to reprise his role, because you got no indication of that desire here. Or, even better, give Michelle Rodriguez her own spin off as Luz, the Mexican revolutionary. Unlike Trejo, she actually seemed like she wanted to be there.

In Robert Rodriguez's Machete Kills, Danny Trejo's character—deadly Mexican secret agent Machete Cortez—is about as three-dimensional and grounded in realism as a Looney Tunes cartoon character tripping on peyote. For many, this move towards a crazier style with even more unbelievable splatstick violence will be a step too far, the live-action-cartoon style antics exceeding many people's willingness to suspend disbelief. However, those who can find their way safely past this potential stumbling block should have a whale of a time.

Rodriguez directs proceedings with a carefree attitude and sense of fun that I found infectious, with all ideas—no matter how dumb they must have looked on paper—making their way into the final film. Thus, we have a Bond-style baddie in the form of megalomaniac Luther Voz (Mel Gibson), our hero killing numerous henchmen in a variety of creative ways, some innovative sci-fi weaponry, plenty of cool in-jokes for us movie geeks (I loved the visual reference to Mad Max II) and a bevy of lovely latino babes in sexy gear (including Alexa Vega in PVC and Michelle Rodriguez in tight, cleavage enhancing top). Hell, Rodriguez is having so much fun that he doesn't even care about the quality of his CGI, which only adds to the gleefully gaudy vibe.

It all gets very silly, and with the next sequel featuring Machete in space, it's set to get a whole lot sillier; I for one will make sure I've booked my seat for the ride.

7.5 out of 10, rounded up to 8 for being marginally more fun than the first one.