23 years after they starred together in Y Tu Mama Tambien, Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna return in Hulu’s La Máquina, for a completely different type of conflict. Once more cast as long-time friends with a complex dynamic as they were in Alfonso Cuarón’s coming-of-age drama, the Mexican acting duo and frequent collaborators are again on strong form.
Far removed from the guts and glory spirit of the Rocky franchise – the torch-bearer when it comes to screen boxing stories, of course – La Máquina is an increasingly claustrophobic drama set around the world of boxing. Unafraid of dipping into the realms of farce, the miniseries has the characteristic political undertones of many of Garcia Bernal and Luna’s other projects, but focused on the microcosmic target of corruption, deceit, and disaster in the sporting world as the backdrop of two men fighting to gain control of their lives and legacies.
Garcia Bernal plays Esteban “La Máquina ” (The Machine) Osuna, a fighter at the end of his career, who suffers a world-changing defeat, and is handed a final shot of glory. He struggles with addiction and self-destructive behavior, as well as terrifying medical aftereffects of his career, which nonetheless still defines him. Luna is his promoter and childhood friend, seemingly pulling the strings of his career, manipulating things towards a final pay-off that restores Osuna’s image. Almost immediately, the decisions of his past come back to haunt both men.
Inevitably, La Máquina Has Things To Say
It’s More Like Uncut Gems Than Rocky
Rocky spends a lot of time building up its superhuman characters, and obsesses over the idea of stardom being achievable for anyone resilient enough. La Máquina, in contrast, flips the story: Esteban is crushingly normal, behind the glossy picture Andy manipulates, and is faced with the nightmare that he was never in control. He has normal problems, normal fears, normal weaknesses against the backdrop of superstardom in the circus of fame, and we’re gradually introduced to the idea that he is a victim, rather than a worthy victor.
La Máquina explores a very un-Rocky-like question. What would you do not only if faced with the idea of selling your soul, but with the revelation that it was already sold out from under you? And while the boxing takes a backseat to a wider focus on the world around it, the story mimics a boxing match, landing haymakers, throwing in hopeful counters, and balancing entertainment with some heavy blows. The strongest parts of the show are watching Esteban and Andy attempting to regain control as everything spirals away from them, and the only solution is something neither of them seems willing to accept.
The miniseries is one part Shakespearean tragedy, with some appropriately grotesque characters, one part Mexican telenovela, and one part Uncut Gems with slightly less fraught anxiety. It places Gael Garcia Bernal’s aging boxer in the eye of a storm of unfortunate circumstances – skeletons in his closet he wasn’t even aware of, the looming specter of CTE and its very real symptoms, and an organized crime undercurrent that threatens to destroy his life and legacy.
La Máquina Struggles With Its Own Story
Grand Aspirations End Up Muddled In A Very Busy Plot
There’s a lot going on in La Máquina, and as a result, the story ends up quite muddled: great ideas, like an exposé on the exploitation of boxers by their promoters or the very serious CTE issue are picked up and dropped (or resolved in illogical ways). An entire character who is set up as important disappears entirely, and another becomes the focal point of the second half of the series who appears out of nowhere.
It feels like there are just too many ideas warring at once, as La Máquina battles to be both a contained story and something far bigger. In an attempt to tell both Andy and Esteban’s stories simultaneously, alongside its bigger concepts, La Máquina loses its way a little. Some elements are just too distracting, and what could have been a pressure cooker build to the final fight and the resolution of the ideas set up very early around corruption, legacy, and mortality gets messy.
At one point, there’s a diverting flirtation with the idea of La Máquina as a Heart of Darkness-style venture into Esteban’s inner psyche, but it’s unbalanced by the conspiracy plot. The setup is so weird it feels like it’s taken from an entirely different show. There’s a bit of an identity problem here, fundamentally: we neither get a deep enough exploration of Esteban’s own troubled existence nor a fully satisfying commentary on corruption.
Without seeing the end (pre-release access was limited to the first 5 of 6 episodes), it’s hard to say much about how the threads are tied up or the ideas resolved, but by the end of the penultimate episode, the general feeling is one of slightly confused frustration. Yes, there are excellent things here, but the tone wanders illogically, the story becomes a rat’s nest, and the punches start to feel labored.
Garcia Bernal & Luna’s Newest Reunion Is A Tale Of Two Very Different Performances
And Both Actors Are Excellent
Garcia Bernal is subtle but very good as Esteban, and completely at odds with the caricatured image of boxers: he has all the hallmarks of the troubled star these stories favor, and his volatility occasionally rears up, but he is otherwise largely unremarkable. He doesn’t look like a boxer, doesn’t act with the excess of a superstar, and could believably disappear into the background entirely. That subtlety is very effective, and Garcia Bernal delivers an impressive picture of a haunted man unraveling.
Luna, on the other hand, is an ostentatious caricature, preened and almost unrecognizable under prosthetics to ape a little too much cosmetic surgery. He’s a peacock, rather unsubtly burdened with fertility issues to tell you what the real message is with him, who wears a toupé, and is at the mercy of his Lady MacBeth-like mother (Lucía Méndez). It’s a very different performance for Luna, particularly set against his leading role in Andor, but it’s very obvious he’s having fun with the material and he’s excellent.
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It’s not entirely appropriate to compare La Máquina to Y Tu Mama Tambien, despite the marketing leaning on the lead actors’ reunion (in actual fact, this is the third project they’ve worked on since after Rudo y Cursi (2008) and Casa de mi Padre (2012)) other than in broad strokes. It trades hard on Luna and Garcia Bernal’s easy charisma together, of course, but it’s a show more about conflict than it is friendship.
La Máquina Isn’t Really About Boxing
Life, Legacy & Control Are The Bigger Issues
There are still similarities with Rocky, of course, that go beyond La Máquina sharing the world of boxing. All the best boxing stories are underdog stories, which Osuna’s is (albeit at the tail/end of glory), and not just in his bouts. There’s the same hint of medical issues, mental health issues (more a Creed thing than a Rocky one), the background of criminal underworld involvement, and the perpetual draw of being in the fight. But La Máquina is far more modern, and almost provocatively ignores the boxing ring.
Rocky and Creed’s boxing worlds are gladiator arenas where boxers tangle in the ballet of combat, and the ring is a stage. It’s all very reverent, even with Rocky’s barely explored criminal background. La Máquina, in contrast, acknowledges that boxing is full of clowns and ghouls. It’s not a serious world, and the show challenges that po-faced grit. Boxers here aren’t hulking monsters, moral conflicts aren’t black and white, and the portrayal of the cutthroat media industry around the sport is very well observed. All it needed was for an influencer to muscle in on the sport for full realism.
I actually wish there’d been more of that world, but instead La Máquina settles on telling the story of two men struggling with their decisions and the pressures of their parents: one absent (in Esteban’s case), and one all-too present (in Andy’s). The actors have spoken about reflecting their careers in La Máquina, and you can see it in the focus on performance and control, and the heavy burden of expectation. The show is as much about acting as it is about boxing.
When it’s good, it’s very good, but I was left feeling a little disappointed by the sharp plot turns, the tonal shifts, and the loss of focus on the strongest and most interesting ideas in favor of something fundamentally sillier. That’s never more obvious than with
Eiza González’s Irasema – Esteban’s ex-wife and an investigative journalist – who threatens to blow the boxing world apart with revelations of CTEs, but who seems to forget her agenda and moves on to wider corruption.
What could have been a somber meditation on the cost of Esteban’s fame on his body and a trial of the people who put him there becomes a flashier tale of government-level corruption, and Irasema ends up a pawn in someone else’s story. Ultimately, La Máquina becomes a slight mismatch against too many opponents at once. To call it great, you have to ignore too much, but it’s still an entertaining watch that does an admirable job of defying expectations.
All 6 episodes of La Máquina premiere on Hulu on October 9th