The film fluctuates haphazardly between semi-serious reverence and tongue-in-cheek camp, with no shortage of opportunities for the inevitable Rifftrax accompaniment.
In what sense, then, is Machete Kills not simply that: a cash-in sequel meant to make fast money?
Allegedly containing the largest cast in history, Movie 43’s cornucopia of A- and B-listers never come together as a true ensemble.
The film blows the opportunity to express something meaningful about current events.
The Help represents a pitiful lack of progress, and that’s hardly an indictment of the ways its characters and events are depicted on screen.
For a project that aims to be so location specific, most of the segments seem largely isolated from their nominal settings.
Brett Ratner’s glossy direction doesn’t add much energy or style to the vacuous plot and tame action.
Nicholas Jarecki’s The Outsider doesn’t have the edge of a race-conscious James Toback film.
Prepared to be stunned, because Brett Ratner does not completely sully your beloved mutants-versus-the-world franchise.
Kudos to Ratner for at least acknowledging that the film’s gay jokes are cheap-doesn’t make him any less of a prick, but still.
At what point after a film is greenlit does a movie exec turn to the filmmakers and demand an intimate “homo” moment between the screenplay’s straight dudes?
The pitch meeting must have gone something like this.
Jackie Chan lost his grace years ago and Chris Tucker has the voice and personality only a blind/deaf canine could love unconditionally.