La Máquina shows the corruption in the boxing ring

The Machine. Disney+.

★★★

Boxing rings stories of success, loss, knocked to the floor and champions rising to their feet once again have been built through the hard-handed dunars. We remember Robert DeNiron in the tormented Jake LaMotta’s film Like a raging bull, Sylvester Stallon Rocky Balboa as well Hillary Swankin as the underdog Maggie Million Dollar Babyssa.

In Mexican The Machine – series we meet one of them again: Esteban Osuna (Gael García Bernal) is a boxing great known to everyone, whose career is already on the eve side. Osuna’s nickname is La Máquina, the machine, but false jaws think the boxing machine has become a vacuum cleaner.

Series throws the viewer in at the very beginning to follow Esteban’s preparation for an important match. The setting is a classic of boxing movies, where a rising star challenges an old champion. From the dressing room, we make our way to the ring, in the middle of the audience’s applause, until the lights go out.

Next, Esteban wakes up surrounded by medical staff on the way to the hospital. It went as usual: first hit the opponent, then hit the gong.

From here it could very well start with a spiky dramedy about a former great struggling to stand up or a thoughtful drama about a man learning about life after a boxing career, but by Marco Ramirez scripted by The Machine is a more complicated case. Most of all, it resembles a crime drama, and you can guess why. In boxing filming, the possibility of manipulated matches is often hinted at.

It’s the same now. Esteban’s Manager Andy (Diego Luna) a deal from the past comes back to haunt and pulls the duo into the dark side of professional boxing. When Esteban suddenly gets another unique opportunity in his career, there is one big but.

Garcia Bernal and Luna are Actors of the same generation and started their careers already in the 1990s in a telenovela Grandpa and I. At the beginning of the 2000s, both managed to break into international film productions as well.

The Machines the actors’ chemistry works, even if their characters are not very talkative.

The more interesting person of the two is Andy, who is not only Esteban’s manager but also his best friend. The neat and tidy man has succeeded in his work with the help of arrogance and determination. At home, however, he is in his container in front of two women: a wife who should get pregnant, and a possessive mother whose relationship with her son is, to put it mildly, close.

The overshooting of the character fascinates, but in the end the mentioned traits and relationships with the side characters remain just the icing. The same can be said about Esteban’s ex-wife Irasema (Eiza González), from a journalist familiar with match-fixing in boxing rings.

Quite after a promising start The Machine leaves the thoughts of Esteban, who is fumbling with his career and life, in the locker room and focuses on the dirty game of the boxing world with a light touch.

The greatest value of the six-part series remains its entertainment, and of course there is nothing wrong with that.