Movie Review: "Machete Kills" (2013)

Movie: "Machete Kills"

Director: Robert Rodriguez

Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hour, 47 minutes

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Machete Cortez returns to kill again. After the death of his girlfriend Sartana (Jessica Alba) in a gun raid gone wrong, Machete (Danny Trejo) is facing a hangman's noose. When he gets a call from President Rathcock (Carlos Estevez), Machete must travel to Acapulco to take out Mendez (Demian Bichir), the crazy cartel leader with multiple personalities who is threatening to nuke Washington DC. 

*hangs head in shame*

With a box office opening like this, who needs a three-quel?

This is not the worst movie we've seen, but it absolutely, positively fails to live up to the brilliance of its predecessor. "Machete Kills" has its moments of goodness, but they are few and far between. This movie seems to lose itself and all of its steam because its main focus is pushing towards a third-part to the trilogy. One of the most hilarious lines in "Machete" was "Machete don't text." The sequel takes that to the nth degree, driving it into the ground so it's no longer funny. This movie lost almost all of its charm and it's basically just a much tamer, more mainstream sequel. Even Danny Trejo seemed to be not as "in it" as he was in the first movie. Demian Bichir and Mel Gibson were, by far, my favorite parts of the movie. In fact, there's nothing wrong with the acting as a whole, it's the story that suffers here. We're not sure what Robert Rodriguez was trying to accomplish with this movie, but you can be that Tarantino has had words with him about it.

My Rating: 5/10

BigJ's Rating: 6/10

IMDB's Rating: 6.4/10

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 30%

Do we recommend this movie: Meh.