Machete don’t do a lot of things. He don’t text, he don’t tweet, he don’t die. Maybe he should add sequels to his list. MACHETE KILLS is the next installment that features Danny Trejo as the former Federale who is the badass’ badass. We find Machete and his girlfriend (?) Jessica Alba busting American soldiers trying to sell weapons to a Mexican cartel. The cartel shows up and kills the soldiers, then some mercenaries show up and kill the cartel guys. Then Alba gets shot in the head. I could continue, but what’s the point. The cast is filled with pretty good actors (Walton Goggins, William Sadler, Michelle Rodriguez, Mel Gibson, Demian Bechir, Amber Heard, Sofia Vergara, Carlos Estevez… yeah, Charlie Sheen). But they have nothing to work with but smarmy dialogue and extreme violence. I expected the violence. I also expected some depth of character which the main characters in the original MACHETE had. Not here. They try to give a few characters backstories, but they are ridiculous even for this genre. To illustrate how awful this is, there are nods to Star Wars and Mooraker and neither are funny or work at all. Eventually Machete is launched into orbit on a Space-X rocket, complete with cameo send off from Elon Musk. And then all of a sudden, it just stops, with the promise of a sequel. What? Robert Rodriguez wants to make me sit through another one of these idiotic nods to 1970’s Grindhouse movies? No way. I’m out. No amount of cartoonish violence, women wearing body hugging bodices or snarls from Danny Trejo can get me into another theater to watch part three of this mess. MACHETE KILLS fun. — Alan Yudman