Kills, thrills, spoofs and stars
Mel Gibson, Lady Gaga among big names in action-packed flick
The Spy Kids series proved that Robert Rodriguez knows how to grow his movie industry.
He does, after all, operate a ministudio in Austin, Texas, that hungers for product to produce, so produce he does.
Supply and demand aside, sometimes moviegoers don’t know what they want until Rodriguez gives it to them.
That sort of brings us to Machete Kills, which opens on Friday.
In the beginning, Machete was a tongue-in-cheeky Grindhouse trailer stuck in the middle of Rodriquez’s buckets-ofblood Planet Terror and Quentin Tarantino’s high-concept lowbrow B-movie actioneer, Death Proof.
The 2007 double-feature take on 1970s and ’80s exploitation flicks was greeted with a modest response from critics and shrugs of just OK from fans of the dynamic dude duo.
Still, Rodriguez, the pop culture exploiter he is, sensed a Machete market with his Spy Kids buddy Danny Trejo as the killer title character.
Machete, the movie, was born in 2010. It earned a decent $40 million US theatrically and almost as much from spinoffs (although a Machete doll never made it to the drawing board).
Three years later, Machete Kills hits theatres with a devotion to spoof duty.
Trejo’s former agent Machete is back, and he means slashingand-a-gashing business when he’s hired by the U.S. president to eliminate a terrorist.
To explain that the president is played by Carlos Estevez (who is really Charlie Sheen) is to understand the flagrant yuk-yuk tone Rodriguez is pursuing yet again.
So Machete’s mission — a plot excuse for all-star confrontations — seems relentless in its commitment to mayhem.
Appearing in no particular order of cameo destruction are:
Mel Gibson as a billionaire arms dealer with world domination plans that are out of this world.
Sofia Vergara flaunts her full upper body with dual machine guns fitted in her bra.
Lady Gaga looks and sounds more goofy than bizarre as a chameleon contract killer.
Amber Heard is seen as Miss San Antonio, who wants world peace but may or may not be trusted as Machete’s undercover(s) handler.
Cuba Gooding Jr. as an assassin who seems bored most of the time.
Of course, Rodriguez likes his regulars, too. Former Spy Kid Alexa Vega returns to do some damage looking like a Sin City extra with a side order of cleavage, which tends to be more nostalgically disturbing than post-modern alluring. Michelle Rodriguez plays Machete sidekick Luz once more, hinting that she probably had a two-picture deal with an option to be killed in the potential third.
And yes, there is a high femme fatale quotient. But Rodriguez has an explanation.
In his 10-kid family, he grew up with five sisters.
“I grew up with strong females around me,” he said in a recent interview. And what’s with Lady Gaga? It turns out she was a Machete fan, so the director invited her to the next party.
“She even brought her own outfits,” said the budget-conscious Rodriguez, who shot the spectacle in a mere 29 days.
It seems, too, that Rodriguez can’t do a film without including his Spy Kids/Desperado good luck charm Antonio Banderas, who shows up as a nerdy Mexican bound for an inglorious unhappy ending.
All things considered, Rodriguez seemed to accomplish what he set out to do, whether you want him to or not.
And be prepared: The next maybe yet to come. An opening trailer and a cutesy climax suggest space might be his next frontier as in Machete Kills Again … in Space!