La Máquina is a unique boxing drama with style to spare
Hulu’s genre-mashing Spanish-language miniseries reunites Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna
Photo: Hulu
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.