MACHETE KILLS (Robert Rodriguez). 107 minutes. Some subtitles. Opens Thursday (October 10). For venues and times, see listings. Rating: NN
Robert Rodriguez can give great grindhouse. From Dusk Till Dawn, Planet Terror and the first Machete are all an awful lot of fun, honouring the spirit of cheesy 70s programmers while working as self-contained stories.
But he never knows when to quit – there are four Spy Kids movies, for crying out loud. So now we have Machete Kills, which brings back Danny Trejo’s nigh-indestructible Mexican avenger for another gritty, self-aware shoot-em-up.
This time, our hero is recruited by the President of the United States (Charlie Sheen, billed as Carlos Estevez) to find Mendez (Demian Bichir), a Mexican terrorist holding DC hostage with a missile. But things get complicated when Machete discovers Mendez is the semi-unwilling pawn of an arms dealer (Mel Gibson, doing a pretty good job of being loathsomely smug).
The pairing of the taciturn Machete and the antic Mendez is fun for a while – it’s the Mexican Midnight Run! – but Rodriguez just lets it go on and on, with shootouts and standoffs and reversals and explosions and a protracted climax that tries to nudge the series into a completely different genre.
By the time it ends, the promise of a third film feels less like a joke than a threat. Count me out, dude.
