By early June 2012, it was announced that Danny Trejo, Michelle Rodriguez, Jessica Alba, and Tom Savini returned to reprise their roles, with Mel Gibson, Sofía Vergara, Amber Heard, Demián Bichir, Charlie Sheen, Cuba Gooding Jr., Lady Gaga, Antonio Banderas, Vanessa Hudgens, Alexa Vega, and William Sadler rounding out the film's cast in the sequel to Rodriguez's 2010 action exploitation film. At the same time, with a budget of $20 million, principal photography commenced, and wrapped in late July. Filming took place throughout Austin, Texas; including Troublemaker Studios. In late June 2013, the film's release date was pushed back from September 13, 2013, to October 11, 2013, to avoid competition with Insidious: Chapter 2.
The film stars Trejo in the title role, with Rodriguez, Gibson, Vergara, Heard, Bichir, Sheen, Gooding Jr., Gaga, Banderas, Alba, Hudgens, Vega, Sadler, and Savini. The actors clearly know how to fit into this graphic exploitation world, and are a great reason to see this sequel. This is a great cast, but with the few exceptions they simply serve the effects.
Machete Kills boasts the same stylish violence and striking visual palette of the first Machete flick, but lacks its predecessor's brutal impact. This is Rodriguez's third sequel in a row in which he turns sex, violence and exploitation into an occasion for dullness. For a film loaded with decapitations and gun-toting ladies in bondage gear, the sequel gets really tedious really quickly. Rare indeed is the movie that features this many bared breasts, pummeled crotches and severed noggins and still leaves you checking your watch every 10 minutes. As an exercise in style, it's diverting enough, but these mean streets are so well traveled that it takes someone like Trejo to make the detour through them worth the trip. This sequel features the signature characteristics and many of the original's characters but seems less adventurous. It feels a little flabby and self-satisfied. The element of surprise is gone. It's 100 solid minutes of wearying pastiche, and I found myself checking my watch a lot. The aesthetic quality is still there, even if there haven't been too many great leaps since Rodriguez unveiled Machete in 2010. But the stories aren't nearly as engrossing. The sequel is worth the watch if you expect nothing more than disparate comic-strip frames of action. But three years in coming, this follow-up ultimately fizzles. As in the first film, there are judicious stabs of color. And Alba was a showstopper. But three years wiser, we know that pretty things aren't always worth killing for. As usual with Machete, much of the vibe is about echoing genre touchstones, while the look isn't quite like anything else the digital age has seen.
Machete Kills boasts the same stylish violence and striking visual palette of the first Machete flick, but lacks its predecessor's brutal impact. This is Rodriguez's third sequel in a row in which he turns sex, violence and exploitation into an occasion for dullness. For a film loaded with decapitations and gun-toting ladies in bondage gear, the sequel gets really tedious really quickly. Rare indeed is the movie that features this many bared breasts, pummeled crotches and severed noggins and still leaves you checking your watch every 10 minutes. As an exercise in style, it's diverting enough, but these mean streets are so well traveled that it takes someone like Trejo to make the detour through them worth the trip. This sequel features the signature characteristics and many of the original's characters but seems less adventurous. It feels a little flabby and self-satisfied. The element of surprise is gone. It's 100 solid minutes of wearying pastiche, and I found myself checking my watch a lot. The aesthetic quality is still there, even if there haven't been too many great leaps since Rodriguez unveiled Machete in 2010. But the stories aren't nearly as engrossing. The sequel is worth the watch if you expect nothing more than disparate comic-strip frames of action. But three years in coming, this follow-up ultimately fizzles. As in the first film, there are judicious stabs of color. And Alba was a showstopper. But three years wiser, we know that pretty things aren't always worth killing for. As usual with Machete, much of the vibe is about echoing genre touchstones, while the look isn't quite like anything else the digital age has seen.
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