Machete Kills

"Machete Kills" takes on the madman taking over the world sub genre favored by middle-era James Bond films, mixes that with an excess of "Star Wars" jokes, and concocts a bland caricature.

Machete Kills is a film in which style sardonically routs substance, a cloying gag built around the iconic quality of Trejo's matchlessly craggy face, which resembles a plate of sundried corned beef.

This ignores the first rule of proper B-movie exploitation cinema - that anything over 89 minutes is just excess baggage, of which Machete Kills has plenty. Still, at least it's authentic in one respect - the trailer is better than the film.

A self-aware exploitation picture that winks as it picks your pocket.

When a celebrity chef like Rodriguez is just going through the motions, we can smell that the grindhouse fad is way past its expiration date. It's time to put a fork in it.

"Machete Kills" is barely a movie. It's an inside joke wrapped in a fanboy fantasy, pieced together through a haze of ironic detachment.

Vergara, whom most viewers are accustomed to seeing as the loveable, hot matriarch in “Modern Family,” steals the movie as the homicidal, man-hating, rage-filled whorehouse madam. She feels like the most authentic, Rodriguez character in the film

The director’s cinematic in-joke has run its course and has now entered overkill mode.

Even in its bloated state, it's still an entertaining grindhouse flick.

Trejo oozes grindhouse cool, but the movie itself commits an exploitation film sin - it's dull.