Machete Kills

Machete Kills - Dir. Robert Rodriguez (2013)

Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino paid homage to the exploitation movies of their youth with the 2007 double feature Grindhouse. They had big plans to turn it into a franchise until the film died at the box office. Still, there was enough interest to spinoff Machete, a machete wielding badass who made his first appearance in one of Grindhouse's faux-trailers.

Described as ”FBI, CIA, and DEA all rolled into one mean burrito," Machete starred in a self-titled feature film bolstered by over-the-top action and an eclectic cast that included Robert DeNiro and Lindsay Lohan. Of course, Machete couldn't have worked without its star, Trejo, the craggily faced and tattooed character actor in his biggest role to date. Trejo returns in the sequel, Machete Kills, which remains faithful to its B-movie roots while upping the ante by adding a sci-fi spin. There's a lead villain cut from the same mold as Hugo Drax from Moonraker and plenty of Star Wars references.

A mission to foil an arms deal ends disastrously for Machete and ICE agent Sartana (Jessica Alba). Our hero is about to be hanged by a redneck sheriff (William Sadler) when he's pardoned by President Rathcock (Charlie Sheen, billed under his real name of Carlos Estevez). POTUS sends Machete into Mexico to track down a nuclear weapon that has fallen into the hands of a former cartel leader known as Mendez the Madman (Demián Bichir), so called because of his multiple personalities. However, the real mastermind is revealed to be billionaire industrialist Luther Voz (Mel Gibson), who has concocted a plan to engulf the entire world in nuclear war.

Also returning for the sequel are Michelle Rodriguez as the one-eyed revolutionary She and Tom Savini as hitman Osiris Amanpour. Joining them are Amber Heard as beauty queen/secret agent Miss San Antonio and Sofia Vergara as Desdemona, leader of a gang of deadly prostitutes. While the cast is as star-studded as its predecessor, most of the actors (Vanessa Hudgens, for example) appear in glorified cameos. One character, a master of disguise named The Chameleon, is simply there to justify a string of gonzo, guest appearances by Walt Goggins, Lady Gaga, and Cuba Gooding Jr. Only a few get to make any real impression, such as Sheen who has fun playing into his tabloid persona as a boozehound and horndog. Bichir and Gibson (in his first turn as a bad guy) give the best performances as both actors straddle the line between cartoonish villainy and honest-to-goodness gravitas. Bichir, in particular, brings some surprisingly soulful moments to Machete Kills.

Rodriguez's flair for action isn't fully on display here. Machete Kills manages a couple of decent set pieces, usually involving Machete versus Chilean martial arts star Marko Zaror. Unfortunately, much of the film is repetitive with Rodriguez relying one too many times on his hero killing henchmen by throwing them into helicopter blades. Sofia Vergara, who plays it to the hilt, packs a high caliber brassier as well as the crotch gun from Desperado and From Dusk Till Dawn. Even a catfight between Amber Heard and Michelle Rodriguez comes off dull.

Machete Kills opens with another faux-trailer for a third picture, Machete Kills Again…in Space, that offers more thrills than the actual movie that followed. Maybe it's time to say, "Adios," to this franchise.

Rating: ** (*****)

Sucker Punch

Sucker Punch - Dir. Zack Snyder (2011)

It's ironic that Zack Snyder calls his production company, Cruel and Unusual Films, because his latest picture is a cruel and unusual experience. Sucker Punch is a tedious and exhausting exercise in sensory overload. Snyder has been marketed as a "visionary director" for helming a surprisingly good remake of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead as well as the meticulously faithful comic book adaptations, 300 and Watchmen. Visionary? I actually agree. It takes a man of unique vision to make such a dull movie, despite the fact that it revolves around beautiful young girls armed to the teeth with automatic weapons, swords, and mechsuits.

Snyder unleashes his first film based on an original idea, fleshed out by himself and co-writer Steve Shibuya. However, all Sucker Punch proves is that Snyder doesn't have an original idea floating around in his head. Just bits and pieces of all those issues of Heavy Metal he grew up on with whatever hip video games, anime, and comics the kids are all talking about these days.

Sucker Punch opens with a wordless prologue set in the 1960's and featuring Emily Browning as a blonde, pig-tailed girl known only as Baby Doll. The actress provides something akin to narration with a melodiously melancholy version of "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" by The Eurythmics. Baby Doll's mother has passed away, leaving her and a younger sister in the charge of their wicked stepfather (Gerard Plunkett), who is angered at being cut out of the will. Baby Doll accidentally shoots her sibling while trying to stop stepdad from molesting her. As a result, he has Baby Doll committed to a mental institute. It's a feel-good movie for the whole family.

The ticking clock counts down when the stepfather bribes a crooked orderly, Blue (Oscar Isaac), to forge a signature from Dr. Gorski (Carla Gugino) in order to have Baby Doll lobotomized. She must find a way to escape from this gothic horror show and does so in more ways than one. Baby Doll imagines the insane asylum is now a high-class nightclub/bordello where she and her fellow inmates are forced to work as dancers and hookers. Blue is re-imagined as the owner/pimp with Gorski as their demanding dance instructor. As Baby Doll is forced to strut her stuff, her mind travels deeper into a second fantasy world where we go from Black Swan to Kill Bill with our heroine dressed in a black schoolgirl outfit and looking like the pinky violence version of Sailor Moon. There, she is tasked by the Wise Man (Scott Glenn in the David Carradine role) to gather a collection of objects which will facilitate her escape.

Soon, she is joined by Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), Rocket (Jena Malone), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), and Amber (Jamie Chung). Trading in burlesque outfits for dominatrix combat gear, they become an elite fighting force battling Nazi steampunk zombies on an apocalyptic WWII battleground, Orcs and fire-breathing dragons in a dark Lord of the Rings inspired castle, and gleaming robots on a speeding futuristic bullet train.

The action sequences are undeniably the main attraction of Sucker Punch and it's obvious they were Snyder's primary concern. The marketing has revolved entirely around ass-kicking girls. The over-the-top fantasy realms Snyder has dreamed up are stunning, confectionary visuals for the undemanding movie-goer seeking sweet, sweet eye candy. These scenes revel in their ludicrousness. In the first fantasy, Baby Doll delivers a death blow to a giant samurai armed with a Gatling gun then walks away in slow motion as everything explodes behind her and all set to Bjork's "Army of Me." The very idea seems fun at first until you realize that there are no stakes or emotional engagement. Snyder makes no attempt to blur the lines between reality and fantasy. We know we are in the protagonist's imagination as such we know the girls are in no danger because none of it is real. Once the novelty wears off, the spectacular set pieces become more and more dull to the point where the final sequence descends into a chaotic mess as Snyder crams as much as possible into every shot. Snyder tops it off by drowning everything with fem-rock covers of tunes by varied artists like the Stooges, the Beatles, and the Pixies ("Where is My Mind" to really drive the point home). Some of the songs are quite good such as a cover of "White Rabbit" by Emiliana Torrini (another Icelandic artist), but an obnoxious gangsta rap mash-up of Queen's "We Will Rock You," succinctly signifies exactly what went wrong with this jam session of half-baked concepts.

Simply because the film features women wielding weapons larger than their petite frames, it is somehow meant as a rallying cry for girl power. On the contrary, Sucker Punch is merely an indulgent adolescent fanboy wet dream masquerading as female empowerment. It doesn't help that the leads have even less defined personalities than the Spice Girls. The outfits are certainly fetishized with Baby Doll and company going from bustiers, silk stockings, and high heels to bustiers, silk stockings, high heels, and machine guns. There's nothing wrong with that and it isn't dissimilar to the sweaty bare-chested Spartans of 300. No, the main problem is that nearly all the butt kicking the heroines supposedly do only occurs in a second level fantasy, a solitary refuge from a fatalistic world where abuse and sexual assault are constant threats. Even in this dreamland it is the Wise Man who offers the girls sage advice and points them in the direction towards the path to liberation. It's a surprise Snyder didn't go the more obvious route and place Carla Gugino's character into the role of the mentor. Alas, the strong matriarch is reduced to either an ineffectual authority figure or a weeping mess brought to her knees by male brutality.

Has Warner Brothers' golden boy, Zack Snyder, lost some of his luster? It bares bad omens for his upcoming Superman reboot. With a production budget of over $80 million (not factoring in marketing costs), it had to be a more than a disappointment that Sucker Punch (even with overpriced IMAX screenings) was sucker punched by the family friendly, Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2. The negative critical response probably helped in spreading bad word of mouth about the film. It will likely be a long time before Snyder is given free reign as he clearly bit off more than he could chew. Sucker Punch tries to be far too many things as if Snyder polled Comic-Con attendees about their favorite things and smashed them all together. It's Moulin Rouge meets Inception. It's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with the Pussycat Dolls. It's Girls with Guns, Interrupted. It's just a terrible mess, a thinly veiled video game haphazardly brought to movie screens.

Rating: * ½ (*****)