I'm not implying that "Machete" is similar in tone or content to "The Colbert Report", but it did have a similar genesis.  Both started out life as joke ads for projects that didn't really exist.  As a part of the "Grindhouse" project, Robert Rodriguez created a faux-trailer for a Mexploitation splatterfest starring everyone's favorite, craggy Mexican, Danny Trejo.  Then someone realized this might just be a worthwhile project!

 

Rodriguez got the actors from the original trailer (Cheech Marin as a gun-toting priest, and Jeff Fahey as the bad guy) and added a whole bunch more: Robert Deniro, Don Johnson, Steven Segal, Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Alba and Michelle Rodriguez.  That's quite a cast for a film that never existed.

 

Most of the signature moments from the trailer (including Machete jumping over a ginormous explosion on a motorcycle equipped with a firing gatling gun) appear in this film, and astonishingly, it all sort of fits together.  Fahey hires Trejo to kill a Texas State Sentator (Deniro) who advocates building an electrified fence across the US-Mexico border.  Double-cross!  Revenge!

 

Along the way Machete must deal with a whole army of bad guys, most of whom he dispaches with some form of edged weapon.  (He also manages to bed Lohan, Rodriguez and Alba before the film is over.)  The action beats are fun, and though they are super-bloody, they aren't strictly horrifying (the way "Piranha 3D" was).  It's cartoonish violence.

 

For me, there are two basic flaws in the picture.  First, I understand that the subtext of the film is that honest Mexican laborers (on both sides of the border) are a trodden-upon underclass that must fight for their rights.  That's fine.  But I wish there had been more positive white characters.  In the final analysis, the only non-Mexicans who aren't outright evil are (a) one white busboy, and (b) a drugged out Lindsay Lohan.  A little more balance might have been nice.

 

The second flaw is a greater one: tone.  Parts of the film are darkly dramatic (such as Machete's grief over the loss of his family), parts are cleverly satirical (such as the news channel named "Exactamundo), and parts are broad comedy (such as the shaved ice vendor rolling his cart into the final battle).  Also, I really hated the stupid Six-Million-Dollar-Man sound effect that accompanied every reveal of Stevel Segal's samurai sword.  Dumb.  Super dumb.

 

The bad and the good basically evened out, thus, my middle of the road rating.