Any movie that has Charlie Sheen as the President and Mel Gibson as the villain…well, at least they got the second part right. We’re obviously talking about Machete Kills, which also features Sofia Vergara with a machine gun bra.
The Machete movies are obviously based in the low budget grindhouse world of the ‘70’s, where films weren’t bound by normal conventions, and you could get away with all kinds of insanity. In fact, as you probably already know, Machete was one of the fake trailers in the movie Grindhouse, and the movie grew from there.
We think this was actually a great idea, because I for one love silly B movies from the past. The reviews so far? Not stellar. First Showing calls it “old and tired,” Crave Online wrote that it “feels like an excuse for cheep green screen and CGI gore shots,” while Slash Film writes that “the action is dumb, goofy, very self aware, and Machete Kills is occasionally kind of a blast. The cast is game for anything, and few actors stick around long enough to wear out their welcome. If only the same could be said for the film, which is long, soggy, and distracted by it’s own excess.” (Slash Film also called it “a two-hour Robot Chicken special…”)
We at TGD are somewhat disappointed in Robert Rodriquez in that he was a very clever and promising filmmaker when he started out, but in recent years he’s been turning out a lot of schlock. We get the idea that the Machete series is supposed to be a silly B movie in the first place, but it would be nice to see him return to the inventiveness he had back in his El Mariachi days. (And did we really need a Spy Kids movie in smell-o-vision?)
Look out for Machete Kills on September 26.
