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Daddy issues, mommy issues, traumatic brain injury issues, international organized crime syndicate issues . . . Hulu’s first Spanish-language series, La Máquina, is full of issues. Ostensibly an underdog boxing tale crossed with a crime thriller, the show collapses under the weight of its own story, making for a messy and often confounding viewing experience.
La Máquina starts with a devastating blow to Esteban “La Máquina” Osuna (Gael García Bernal), as he’s knocked out in the first round of a massively hyped boxing match. His manager-slash-best friend Andy (Diego Luna, unrecognizable under layers of makeup and prosthetics) is left to pick up the pieces of his career. After some wheeling and dealing—and maybe some stealing—Andy manages to set up not only a rematch, but a world championship-level fight for Esteban.
However, Esteban is hardly in title-reclaiming shape; he’s still recovering from his previous injury, and years of getting his head bashed in as well as drug and alcohol abuse have taken their toll. It’ll take a lot of work to get him in the right headspace and weight class, but that’s not all. A shady, secretive, seemingly omniscient organization that Andy worked with earlier in his and Esteban’s career is coming to collect, and their request for payment is that Esteban throws the fight. If he doesn’t, Andy, Esteban and everyone they’ve ever loved will be killed. Yikes!
La Máquina throws a lot of punches, but few ever really land. Plot points and story beats become excessive, whether it’s Andy’s creepy, co-dependent relationship with his mother (Lucía Méndez) or the decision by Esteban’s ex-wife Irasema (Eiza González, who delivers some of the best work among the cast) to pick up her late father’s investigation into boxing match fixing. The writing gets overbearing, and there’s no time for any of these moments to sit and settle for the viewers and the characters alike. The stakes fluctuate so wildly and so often that it’s hard to take the drama seriously, and at just six episodes (of which only five were provided for critics) the series tries to do far too much.
It’s a shame too, given that it’s the first television collaboration for long-time creative partners Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna. The project has been in the works for over a decade, with the actors also serving as executive producers; in interviews and press materials, they tout their love of boxing and how they’ve wanted to make something about the sport. That passion doesn’t really come through—you won’t find any expertly shot boxing matches here.
Instead, La Máquina feels almost self-indulgent for the two talented actors: Luna gets to play a larger than life, cosmetic surgery-obsessed character, and García Bernal tackles a role that, in theory, is serious and emotionally complex. García Bernal does well to bring some of Esteban’s struggles to life, such as the aging boxer’s brain trauma-induced hallucinations that provide a pretty literal window into his psyche, but his character arc goes in so many different directions that it’s impossible to grapple with.
La Máquina takes a real kitchen sink approach to its storytelling, stretching credulity with every scene. It’s not enough for the match fixing crime syndicate to just threaten the protagonists; the organization must also be part of an apparent international political conspiracy and somehow maybe have something to do with Esteban’s relationship with his father. Very little makes sense the longer the series goes on, and it seems unlikely that the final episode would tie up the show’s many, many loose ends. It’s a genuinely bewildering watch, and it’ll leave you scratching your head over how it got so out of hand.
‘La Máquina’ premieres on Hulu on October 9th.
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Laura Babiak
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