Danny Trejo and Demian Bichir (Rico Torres/Open Road FIlms)Danny Trejo has a limited emotional range, but that’s all he needs. He’s the kind of character actor who, if he ever resorted to plastic surgery, would have scars added to his weathered, pockmarked puss. Trejo’s stoic presence steers the Machete franchise on his low-tech vigilantism, but the movies are carried by their supporting cast. The first Machete almost got by on the shoulders of MIchelle Rodriguez’s one-eyed tough broad, but high-profile stunt casting like Robert DeNiro and Lindsay Lohan looked better on paper than on screen. The second chapter of the Machete saga is no revelation, and it doesn’t sustain its momentum, but it’s an improvement. Don’t thank the stunt casting. Thank a lesser-known actor who gives this anti-heroic fantasy a formidable villain.
Demián Bichir’s Mendez is a charismatic bad guy, a great foil for Machete’s dry, efficient vengeance. When we meet Mendez, he’s laughing, but he’s no clown, swiftly ordering three senseless murders right in front of his guest. Bichir takes an obvious glee in his performance of a madman with split personalities, but he doesn’t take the easy, campy way out and overplay the madness. His Mendez strikes a good balance between over the top villain and believable larger-than-life character.
Machete don’t wink, and that’s one reason Machete Kills works for its first hour. There are self-conscious details, sure. But for the most part Rodriguez wisely stays away from a knowing tone that would make his grind-house homage an obvious put on, reveling in B-movie tropes while at the same time feeling superior to them.
On the downside, those B-movie tropes include generous servings of misogyny, prostitutes whose breasts are weapons, buxom women drenched in blood and double-crossing beauties.
Hey, it’s a B-movie.
But there are signs of art or something like it in the middle of the sex and ultra-violence. It’s not in the fight scenes, whose sloppy choreography fondly recalls the kind of drive-in movies that inspired it. It’s in the art direction and cinematography, which takes the seedy locales of a Mexploitation movie — a bordello, a dive bar, even a gas station — and creates an atmospheric beauty, establishing a neon serenity as a prelude to roadside carnage.
Mendez and Machete are both mad, but in a kind of vigilante buddy movie dynamic their different methods of madness keep the movie watchable. But the movie falters when the marquee villain shows up. Mel Gibson knows how to play a madman, but his Voz has a bland, corporate madness, which makes him a less interesting foil.
And then there’s Lady Gaga. I don’t want to explain her role in Machete Kills, but she’s part of a puzzle that recalls some of the more surreal moments of Chris Elliott’s Adult Swim series Eagleheart, which like the Machete movies documents the adventures of a man who seeks justice with extreme violence. Eagleheart can be a biting satire, not just of cop shows but of the art world (cf. the episode “Exit Wound the Gift Shop”), with more insane plot twists in a twelve-minute program than Machete Kills fits into a too-long 107 minutes. But that’s not a fair comparison. Machete Kills isn’t a great movie or even a great B-movie, but it does enough of what a good B-movie should do.
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Machete Kills
Directed by Robert Rodriguez
Written by Kyle Ward
With Danny Trejo, Mel Gibson, Demian Bichir, Amber Heard
Rated R For strong bloody violence throughout, language and some sexual content
Opens today at a multiplex near you.
