In the opening moments of La Maquina, Hulu’s new six-episode boxing drama that’s also its first-ever Spanish-language series, a Botoxed, spray-tanned, and snappily dressed manager played by Diego Luna is scolding an assistant for bringing him the wrong drink. The assistant, it turns out, couldn’t locate the correct brand of refreshment — a minor slight, you would think, but one that nevertheless causes Luna’s Andy to have an impromptu meltdown. “This isn’t a game, asshole,” Andy growls at the underling, as they head inside a Las Vegas arena where a fight night is under way.
Andy is an impresario type who’s imparting a lesson about boxing — about the importance of not only the combatants in the ring, but also the myriad intricacies, shadowy players, and even something as prosaic as the right drink that can influence the outcome. In this case, the aging boxer who Andy works for, nicknamed La Maquina (The Machine), has a superstition that involves consuming a particular drink brand before every fight. But now, there’s no time.
Andy scratches the label off of this one. A drink is a drink, right? The boxer, of course, notices — and, soon enough, we catch up with him laid out in the back of an ambulance. Superstition confirmed, it would seem.
The plot of La Maquina is simple: Gael García Bernal, Luna’s real-life friend since birth (literally), portrays Esteban, the boxer. Luna is his plastic surgery-obsessed manager and best friend andy. Esteban is getting older and decides he has one more fight left in him. Actually, it’s Andy who decides that for him, determined to get his friend back on top. The thing about Andy, though, is that he’s long worked with bad dudes to fix fights, including ones involving Esteban. And now, the piper must be paid.
The underworld goons send word: “Esteban tiene que perder.” Esteban has to lose — specifically, he has to throw his upcoming match, or they’ll kill both Andy and Esteban. Which means that, among other things, the latter will be trying to mount a comeback of sorts while also juggling personal demons, in addition to protecting his family. It’s a family that includes his ex-wife Irasema (Eiza Gonzalez), a journalist who’s on her own collision course with the dark side of boxing.
Boxing almost always makes for satisfying, edge-of-your-seat drama. Such fights are as primal as it gets; two guys slugging it out, and it’s simply a matter of who can endure. As if all of the above wasn’t enough, though, the troubles are compounded by Esteban’s blackout drinking, Andy struggling to conceive a child with his wife, and Irasema’s journalistic probing of boxing’s shady puppet masters. Between the drama and the sublime technical choices here, which include marvelous single-takes at the start of two episodes, there’s more than enough to inexorably draw you into the world of La Maquina — and to keep you invested.
Obviously, the “main event” of this series, as it were, is the reunion of Luna and García Bernal, whose first collab was 2001’s coming-of-age Y tu mamá también. Their longtime friendship makes for a compelling on-screen duo with oodles of chemistry, so much so that you could almost imagine them sharing a kind of Pitt-Clooney dynamic (in another decade or so, of course). Hulu’s new series will keep you on your toes largely through their on-screen magic, which is more than enough to deliver a small-screen knockout.
