Avis des critiques

The sequel never heads anywhere, even once it ends up in outer space. All Rodriguez does this time is pour on the cameos and absurdities and nonsense — including Mel Gibson as an evil billionaire. The degree to which Rodriguez doesn't know what to do with himself extends to having Walton Goggins (the credits list him was "Walt") share the same character with Cuba Gooding Jr., Lady Gaga, and Antonio Banderas. It may sound like fun, but the party never leaves Rodriguez's head.

The picture is assembled with energy and a smidgen of style, but it's tiresome and slight. Rodriguez, who also edits, shoots and scores his movies, tries to do too much with too little here. The lighting, editing and special effects are a couple of notches up from a SyFy shark movie.

This moronic hogswill fails in its casual quest for self-aware awfulness by boasting a sense of humour so lame, so base and so bereft of satire (Justin Bieber smackdowns packaged as jokes?!!) that the entire enterprise ends up folding in on its bad meta self.

Like the previous installment, this one overstays its welcome, but between Demian Bichir's over-the-top cackling as the chief villain, Mel Gibson's good-sport embrace of his image problems and a face-changing assassin called The Chameleon, there's something to amuse just about everybody, however irregularly.

You can thrill to Machete Kills's endless stream of slobbery cameos, from Sofía Vergara's deliriously furious brothel keeper to Mel Gibson's Bond-grade tech mastermind (the guy knows his comic beats and is welcome for a change). But 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.

For all its admirable intentions, Machete too often felt like a particularly dull novelty, restrained by a coy attitude toward its socio-political undercurrents. Here, the politics are more purposefully scatterbrained and the racy dialogue feels more of a piece with the outrageousness of the ultra-violent conceit. The glut of the physical gags work so well that you might even be moved to forgive the desperately self-aware Star Wars references.