Don’t take your kids to see “Machete Kills.” Seriously. The sheer amount of blood, gore and violence is enough to send any parents group into a frenzy. As an homage to the exploitation flicks of the past, Robert Rodriguez’s franchise follows an ex–Federale named Machete (Danny Trejo), who is out for justice and vengeance, usually with a bloody touch. While I wasn’t a big fan of the first film, the second installment proved to be enormously entertaining. It was, in a word, ridiculous. In fact, it was the single most ridiculous movie I have ever seen. But in a good way.
For sheer entertainment value, Machete Kills is moviegoer gold. Leave your brain at home and enjoy the nonstop bloody action, hilarious one–liners and over–the–top characters. Who doesn’t want to watch Sofia Vergara fire machine guns from her breasts? Or Charlie Sheen, billed as his legal name Carlos Estevez and starring as the President of the United States? This is as entertaining as lowbrow gets. The movie can basically be summed up in one scene that serves as a microcosm of the entire film: in an escape attempt from one of the villain’s strongholds, Machete fires a grappling hook into a helicopter’s rotating blades and swings around and around, beheading a series of henchmen as he flies. The rules of physics do not apply in the slightest, to grand effect.
If that’s your cup of tea, please please go see this movie. You will not be disappointed in the slightest.
Grade: A Rating & runtime: R, 107 min. See if you liked: “The Expendables,” “From Dusk til Dawn”
