Machete Kills
Open Road Films | Release Date: October 11, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
41
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 33 Critic Reviews
Positive:
6
Mixed:
19
Negative:
8
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
The PlaylistGabe ToroOct 9, 2013
Like its predecessor, Machete Kills is never less than busy with ridiculousness. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanOct 9, 2013
Machete Kills is gruesomely baroque trash staged with a kinetic freedom that is truly eye-popping, so you can forgive its lapses, like how it goes on a little too long. Rodriguez's only real sin as a filmmaker is that he wants to give you way too much of a crazy ultraviolent good time. Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua RothkopfOct 8, 2013
You’re really going for Rodriguez’s retrohappy splatter: Intestines tangle in helicopter rotors, heads pop in spring-loaded decapitations, and there’s even a new fake trailer up top. Little is believable, and that’s exactly as it should be. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubJosh ModellOct 9, 2013
Machete Kills is gleefully ridiculous, one-upping the first movie’s jokes, blood, and even its massively heightened self-awareness. No matter how Rodriguez would like to pitch it, Machete Kills isn’t really an homage to exploitation movies as much as it’s a parody of them. Read full review
70
Village VoiceAmy NicholsonOct 8, 2013
Kills tops the 2010 original by not giving a mierda about logic or character. Read full review
64
Film.comWilliam GossOct 3, 2013
More focused and less preachy than its exploitation-riffing predecessor, the comparably shoddy Machete Kills nonetheless peters out in the homestretch (and, for some, surely sooner). Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzOct 11, 2013
The picture is assembled with energy and a smidgen of style, but it's tiresome and slight. Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliOct 11, 2013
Those who love Robert Rodriguez's over-the-top Grindhouse-flavored spoofs will delight in this one but, ultimately, this is probably one Machete too many. Read full review
50
USA TodayScott BowlesOct 10, 2013
Machete Kills dulls more than anything. It's not that Robert Rodriguez's sequel lacks any of the camp or exploitative violence of the 2010 original. The mayhem has just become boring. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperOct 10, 2013
The harder everyone tries to wring laughs out of the next hail of bullets or the next ridiculous plot twist or the next comedic decapitation, the duller the edge of the humor. Read full review
50
New York PostKyle SmithOct 10, 2013
Entertainingly gruesome in parts, and not without a certain anarchic wit, it’s the kind of movie you pause to watch when it’s on TV, but after half an hour, you’ll click over to something else. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTom RussoOct 10, 2013
Rodriguez does a fair job of keeping the zaniness coming: Vergara’s machine gun bra, Gibson delivering exposition in a “Star Wars” prop, bad guys offed by helicopter blades in dementedly creative ways. It’s enough that you’ll hope Rodriguez makes good on that new faux trailer — for “Machete Kills Again . . . in Space.” Read full review
50
San Francisco ChroniclePeter HartlaubOct 10, 2013
As much as Machete Kills is a reunion and continued revival, it also represents a sort of gentrification of the exploitation genre. It's probably time to move on and let a new generation of kids take a crack at making bad films. Read full review
50
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreOct 10, 2013
Robert Rodriguez is like that friend who loves to tell jokes, but always goes on and on, well past the punch line. Remember how he beat the living daylights out of his “Spy Kids” franchise? That’s what he’s working toward with Machete. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineChris CabinOct 4, 2013
The films that Robert Rodriguez emulates here are known for similar unexpected narrative turns, but the crucial value that he misses is their actual cheapness. Read full review
45
NPRIan BuckwalterOct 11, 2013
At times, to be blunt, he (Trejo) comes off like a silent film star who's accidentally lumbered onto the set of a bloody, violent, thoroughly ridiculous talkie: reluctant to speak, sometimes a little confused by his surroundings. Read full review
40
The GuardianMike McCahillOct 11, 2013
The odd vivid shot reminds you of Rodriguez's dynamic visual imagination, but also what it's wasted on here: a project as indifferent as some of the trash that inspired it. Read full review
40
The TelegraphTim RobeyOct 10, 2013
Perhaps because the joke’s already spent, this sequel has a pretty low bar to clear, and manages to be both utterly meritless and weirdly bearable. Read full review
40
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzOct 10, 2013
Turns out there can be too much of a good thing. Or a campy thing. Or a silly thing. Or a subtle-as-a-brick-in-the-face thing. Read full review
40
The DissolveMatt SingerOct 9, 2013
As a focused spoof of exploitation tropes, Machete Kills is, frankly, terrible. But as a surreal stream of subconsciousness from a filmmaker who’s spent a lifetime watching bad movies, it’s an occasionally entertaining diversion. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovOct 9, 2013
It works extremely well as a drunken, date-night midnighter or film-fest entry, all madcap bloodletting and surrealist non sequiturs. Read full review
40
Time Out LondonTrevor JohnstonOct 8, 2013
Sadly, much as we want to relish the shameless parade of cartoon violence, while indulging the equally shameless cavalcade of adolescent sexism, the soggy plotting and slack comic timing are downers. Read full review
40
Total FilmMatt GlasbyOct 7, 2013
Like a meal made entirely of chillies, Machete Mk II is spicy to start with, then unpleasant, then numbing - before it all starts to repeat. Read full review
40
EmpireDan JolinOct 7, 2013
Violent, silly, embarrassing, clumsy, confusing, juvenile, occasionally offensive, occasionally a little bit fun. Read full review
40
VarietyGeoff BerkshireOct 3, 2013
As violent as its predecessor yet noticeably duller and less outrageous, Machete Kills is dragged to the finish line entirely by its director’s madcap energy and an absurd cast of major stars in strange cameos. Read full review
38
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Dave McGinnOct 10, 2013
It is all so intentionally ridiculous that it gets boring, and you just wait for the next big cornball revelation to momentarily jolt you awake, like Sofia Vergara strapping on her machine-gun bra, or Lady Gaga’s appearance as a hit woman. Machete kills, sure. Unfortunately, he overkills. Read full review
37
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanOct 10, 2013
It’s exhausting. It’s also not particularly funny or engaging. Read full review
30
The New York TimesStephen HoldenOct 10, 2013
All too soon, Machete Kills collapses into a deranged, directionless splatter comedy that exhausts its bag of tricks, many of them recycled from this grindhouse auteur’s 2010 spoof. Read full review
30
Los Angeles TimesMark OlsenOct 10, 2013
Machete Kills winds up a slightly camp, tinny parody of bad action movies, playing out with the same sense of tedium as a genuine bad action movie. Read full review
30
The Hollywood ReporterJustin LoweOct 6, 2013
The cinematic axiom of diminishing returns appears to be catching up with Robert Rodriguez’s Machete franchise in only the second installment, as the series’ engagingly lowbrow concept gets overwhelmed by episodic plotting and uninspired, rote performances. Read full review
25
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsOct 11, 2013
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. Read full review
20
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierOct 10, 2013
Machete Kills? “Machete Bores” is more like it.
20
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinOct 7, 2013
The carnage (with its computer-­generated splatter) is meant to be campy fun, but it’s so offhand that there’s less suspense than in an Austin Powers movie. Read full review
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