Though the film’s overarching narrative travels a well-tread road, it strikes a few potent grace notes along the way.
Rodriguez loves grindhouse cinema, but you’d never know it from Machete, which seems more interested in mockery than homage.
Robert Rodriguez’s films are so busy chuckling at their own supposed audacity that there’s no need for viewers to join in the revelry.
It bears only superficial comparisons to the aesthetic purposes of predecessors like The Last King of Scotland and City of God.