La Máquina is a unique boxing drama with style to spare

La Máquina may very well hold the record for the number of times pendejo is said in a show’s opening minutes. The word (Spanish for “asshole”) is spit out repeatedly in the energetic back-to-back oners that kick off Hulu’s latest miniseries, as Saul (Andrés Delgado), an assistant of sorts, frantically zips through the hallways and kitchen of a buzzing Las Vegas arena—a nice nod to Goodfellas’ Copacabana shot—in search of a specific brand of tamarind-flavored soft drink. It’s for boxer Esteban “La Máquina” Osuna (Gael García Bernal), and the idea that the aging pugilist can’t complete his superstitious routine before a big fight has his manager and best friend, Andy (Diego Luna), freaking out. That we don’t see this match or even its crowd—the show cuts from the deafening hype of Esteban and his crew strutting in the entry tunnel as an announcer bellows his name to the sullen silence of the fighter looking confused in a neck brace in the back of an ambulance—is not only funny but a hint at the tonal and storytelling surprises this particular project seems to revel in deploying.

Written by showrunner Marco Ramirez (Daredevil) and directed with verve and style to spare by Gabriel Ripstein (Narcos), La Máquina has a lot going for it, but its big sell is the obvious one that likely sprung into a lot of minds when the show was first announced: the on-screen reunion of Bernal and Luna (who both, it should be noted, are executive producers here). The two have an undeniably natural chemistry, almost seeming like brothers at times, as evidenced as far back as 2001’s road-trip masterpiece Y Tu Mamá También and as recently as this fall’s Emmys, where the duo co-presented an award mostly in Spanish. This is by no means a hangout comedy—or even a comedy comedy, although, again, it can be quite funny—but you can’t help but just want to hang out with these two as they rib each other. “That’s why you don’t get laid. Just seeing your fridge killed my boner,” Andy teases Esteban early on—and you get the impression some scrambled version of this joke has been said by him a million times. A big question hovering over La Máquina, the same one that hovers over a lot of miniseries these days, is: Would this—especially considering the filmmaking chops on display—actually have been better as a film? That the answer could be no (if only so we can see these two interact more) speaks volumes about their collective charm.  

Beyond the banter and arguments—of which there are many—like Y Tu Mamá También, the show is also very much about the dissolution of a longtime best friendship. But aside from that (and the location, as these characters live in Mexico City, too), the comparisons basically end. (Speaking of that city, it’s getting some much-deserved TV screen time in the States right now, with Apple TV+’s Spanish-language medical melodrama Midnight Family in the midst of its first season.) Instead, La Máquina is a hodgepodge of genres, simultaneously a sports comeback story (after that opening knockout, our pushing-50 boxer delivers one of his own and gets the chance to take on the reigning world champ), a conspiratorial thriller (a mysterious organization simply referred to as “them” is blackmailing Andy, who used to fix fights without his prize fighter’s knowledge), an exposé (Esteban’s ex-wife Irasema, played by 3 Body Problem’s Eiza González, is a former investigative journalist who digs into the sport’s dark side, and a doctor tells the fighter, “Your brain trauma is the same as hitting your head against a concrete wall every day for all of your adult life”), a fever dream (there’s a fantastically staged reenactment of a father abandoning his son), and a dark and occasionally quirky comedy. 

So it’s a lot, and all of this tonal and genre jumping can make the pacing slightly uneven and some of the plotting a tad messy and half baked. That Irasema’s late father just so happened to be a journalist, too, one who spent years uncovering the exact boxing conspiracy she finds herself steeped in, feels incredibly coincidental. What’s more, Bernal isn’t quite as cut as his legendary-boxer status suggests he should be, something the show acknowledges with a TV analyst joking that “he looks like a badly wrapped torta.” And Esteban’s new romance with a dancer (Dariam Coco) just vanishes as his brain-injury hallucinations and the shadowy organization’s threats heat up. (To be fair, only the first five of the miniseries’ six episodes were screened for critics, so loose ends may tie up in the finale.) But it’s also never boring, with big-swing stylistic flourishes and a very funny Luna (who looks like an insane, coked-up, self-Botox-injecting Robert Evans, all spray tans and gaudy jewelry and pastel suits) that make it, while certainly not the cleanest of watches, a unique one that can be a sight to behold.  

La Máquina premieres October 9 on Hulu