As I observed 2 hours ago in my
review of Machete, the first film is about US politics of 2025. The second movie
Machete Kills is something else entirely. If the first film is a semi-parody of exploitation films. This one is a full on spoof comedy, parodying not just exploitation films, but other things too. By the end of the film, the bullshit is so absurd, that you cannot stop laughing. And then
Elon Musk appears out of nowhere to send
Machete into space.
This film is more proudly a
Grindhouse picture. It starts in the similar manner as the double-feature
Robert Rodriguez did in 2007 with
Quentin Tarantino. It has a fake trailer. This time for an unmade third film in the
Machete series. Which is supposed to be a space opera. The film shows you how utterly insane it is from the very beginning. So you will buy the bullshit that goes after that more easily.
The fake trailer claims a very bold claim. It asks us to believe that there will be a
Grindhouse movie with
Leonardo DiCaprio in it, playing the bad guy. Of course in the trailer, we see the bad guy is wearing a mask, and in the end of
Machete Kills we see that same mask worn by
Mel Gibson instead. And the trailer does say that the actor might change, lol. I still think they sort of kind of pulled it off.
The whole Leonardo DiCaprio thing probably came into Robert Rodriguez's mind, because a year earlier, in 2012, Tarantino ( the co-conspirator of Rodriguez when it comes to
Grindhouse ) got DiCaprio into his film
Django Unchained. And then, if you know your Tarantino, he worked with him again, in
Once Upon The Time... in Hollywood.
Now, in
Once Upon The Time... in Hollywood Cliff Booth (
Brad Pitt ) drives into a drive-in cinema, which starts to show a
Grindhouse movie. It has the same music and presentation as the double-feature Rodriguez and Tarantino produced in 2007. And the same music and presentation ( the pink-ish, purple-ish screen with white text ) as in the beginning of
Machete Kills. Which means that
Once Upon The Time... in Hollywood is Bob and Quentin finally delivering on the promise of Leonardo DiCaprio in a
Grindhouse movie.
One of the more absurd characters in
Machete Kills is El Camaleón played simultaneously by
Walton Goggins,
Cuba Gooding Jr.,
Antonio Banderas and
Lady Gaga. I'm not going to spoil it. And in the film it makes as little sense as what I just told you.
In the review of the first film I observed how Rodriguez took
Daryl Sabara from the
Spy Kids films. This time, being a perfectionist, he took Carmel Elizabeth Juanita Echo Sky Bravo Cortez, or the other Spy Kid,
Alexa Vega. This time revealing that Robert probably had a hard on her since she was fucking 11 or something.
Think about it. He casts her to play the cool big sister of the Cortez family in 2001
Spy Kids and then a year later, when she was already 12 or so, he makes her do the song in the end of the second
Spy Kids film, which a lot of kids that were kids in that time ( me included ) remember how fucking hot she was in that scene. Rodriguez directed that scene. Suddenly in
Machete Kills ( technically a part of the same franchise ) Alexa Vega ( now adult ) plays a prostitute, who walks around the whole movie in BDSM clothing. Now tell me he didn't find her hot throughout all this time. I'm not saying he abused her or anything. He just probably found her hot. And by the time of
Machete Kills she found her role to be hot, or hilarious, or both, herself. The rest is history.
In any case,
Danny Trejo returns as
Machete. And is very fucking hilarious in this movie. In the last film, there was an attempt at taking him somewhat seriously. Here he is just this superhuman motherfucker. Like, they hang him. And he just hangs there. And then they release him. And he just walks.
Carlos Estévez ( known professionally as
Charlie Sheen ) plays the president of the United States of America. And I can tell you that his experience on
Hot Shots! payed off big time here. He keeps his cool no matter how absurd the joke is, and that makes everything even funnier. This is gold. Also his dialogue is gold. I wonder if Tarantino helped a bit with writing his part. Because this is fucking gold.
Speaking of Tarantino, Tarantino stole one of the actors Rodriguez found for this movie,
Demián Bichir who played a big role in
The Hateful Eight. Here he is pulling off a charismatic psychopath character with split personality disorder.
And don't you worry, the twins
Electra Avellan and
Elise Avellan are also here. And they are also kicking ass. So...
Happy Hacking!!!
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