Three people.
Poldaran, Steve, and me. It was just us at an early showing of The Machine. A theater employee came to check in on the screening and see if anybody had shown up, and I don’t think he noticed us because the lights came on a little ways through the movie. Not enough to be distracting, but it did set the tone for the next near two hours. It felt like the world was asking, “You paid to see The Machine? Really? Why?”
But before I cover the why let’s get into the who.
Bert Kreischer is a proudly overweight standup comedian famous for a few routines, but none more than the one called The Machine: a story about being a college student on a field trip who helped the Russian mob rob a train. Because of his garbled Russian, he accidently introduces himself to the mobsters as “The Machine” and the rest is history.
Did it really happen? You’ve gotta take the guy’s word on it.
The movie The Machine is a fictional “sequel” to that story. In it Bert plays a fictional version of himself, with his wife, daughters, and father, Albert, being played by actors. Albert is played by Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill. More on him later. After drunkenly and publicly humiliating his oldest daughter, Bert throws her a big birthday party to try and make up for it, much to her annoyance. Albert only makes the situation worse by making near constant passive aggressive remarks at his son’s expense. A heated argument between them is interrupted by the arrival of the best character in the movie, Irina, the eldest daughter of a business man Bert robbed that fateful night decades ago. This resulted in her father breaking bad and dedicating himself to becoming a Russian kingpin. Bert stole a precious family heirloom, a musical pocket watch, and the kingpin’s (allegedly) decided that whichever of his children can retrieve the watch will be chosen as his successor and rightful heir to his empire.
In hopes of proving herself to her father, Irina kidnaps Bert and Albert to use the former to track down the watch’s location. Once we get to Russia the film switches back and forth between two timelines: the present and the series of events that begins with young Bert befriending a low-level mobster, Igor, and ends with the train robbery.
The Machine is a surprisingly complex movie. No, it’s not the Inception of comedies, but we are dealing with a layer cake here. And the core characters all have varying levels of depth to them.
I see Bert, both the actor/comedian and the character, being hit or miss with viewers. It’s a matter of taste. For instance, in real life, I find Patton Oswalt amusing. Poldaran…doesn’t. For Bert Kreischer fans going into this movie expecting his usual washed-up-frat-boy-turned-dumb-dad routine, well, yeah, they’re gonna what they paid for.
I’d call him the weak link of the film if there weren’t several scenes peppered throughout that made me stop and say to myself, “Holy crap, he can actually act.” Whether it’s rage towards his father, being wracked with guilt over helping the mob and betraying his collage crush in the process or bemoaning what a crappy father he’s turned out to be, Kreischer is capable of conveying all of this effectively.
Up until he opens his mouth and blurts out the obligatory joke.
I know it’s a comedy, but I couldn’t help but think of Star Wars while watching it, and not for the reason you’d think. Bert brought the Prequels to mind, especially Hayden Christiansen. The latter is a really good actor constantly trapped inside movies with terrible writing, specifically (and infamously) dialogue in the case of the Prequels. In Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Christiansen is able to wordlessly emote the tragedy and misery that his character is going through as he’s torn between his loyalty to the Jedi-
Who, barring Obi-wan, are a bunch of culty assholes. But that’s neither here nor there.
-and his love for his wife…And then he starts talking and all subtlety is nuked to smithereens!
Real Life-Bert’s like that. The guy can act, but whenever he’s on screen the film feels oddly self-conscious and conflicted. It wants to be a Bert Kreischer standup special and a Russian crime drama. Because take my word for it, when The Machine goes hard, it goes hard.
Remember Irina, the kingpin’s daughter? Again, the best character in the movie. The line between comedy and drama? She is that line. Over the course of the movie she goes from cold-blooded murderer who threatens to have Bert’s daughter killed if he doesn’t help her find the watch, to a cold-blooded murderer who grows to respect him for (accidently) killing one of her younger brother but is still all business, to a cold-blooded murderer who genuinely sees Bert as a friend and freely quotes Steve Urkel from Family Matters. Consistency is key, and while Irina’s character arc isn’t an overtly positive one, it does make her grow as a person. Instead of yearning for her father’s approval and hoping he’ll hand over the key to the kingdom, she learns to become her own boss regardless of what he thinks.
On a related note, while most of the fights involving Bert are played for laughs, even the big brawl at the end, Irina’s fights are all brutal, effective, and easy to follow. The fight choreography in general is really top notch, and that actually makes the gags land harder. Bert’s fist fight with Irina’s other brother (who’d be PERFECT as a young Ivan Drago in a prequel, please, please, please!) is a perfect example of riding the line between action and comedy to perfection. Overall, all of the actors playing the Russian cast are giving it their all, so nothing but respect to them.
For a lot of people, Mark Hammil is going to be the big draw here and he’s…having fun?
Okay, he’s not bad! He’s very entertaining and got some of the biggest laughs from me and the guys. But it was mostly because it was Mark Hammil saying and doing some of this stuff and that’s what made it fun. I could never completely unsee him. He never really became Bert’s dad for me. And despite their relationship being the heart of the story, it eventually felt like the movie was spinning its wheels having them argue over and over and over again. And some of the stuff Albert tells Bert wasn’t funny, just mean and nasty. On the one hand it does a good job of explaining why Bert is so messed up, but it also made me hope that Irina or somebody would put a bullet in his head to shut him up.
Yeah, I’m probably in the minority on this one. Though the sight of a coked-up Mark Hammil is going to make anyone laugh. Screw immersion.
Honorable mentions: Jimmy Tatro plays young Bert in flashbacks (and a scene where old Bert hallucinates him after eating a thirty-year-old pot brownie in the woods) and he does a pretty good job! Could I see him growing up into old Bert? No, but he’s a good actor, and him quoting Austin Powers for the Russians always made me chuckle. Good job, Jimmy.
Bert’s family feels real enough, but they’re a little too squeaky clean for my tastes, especially if you’ve listened or watched the rest of Bert’s standup. In real life (again, according to him) his wife and especially his daughters are just as off kilter and foulmouthed as he is. His movie wife is close to it, willing to giving him crap for being a moron, but…yeah. The film could have done more with them, but I understand them wanting to get Bert and Albert to Russia as soon as possible.
Sponge is great.
What? You want context?
No. Go see the movie.
Is the movie going to change your life? No, but it’s getting its ass kicked by Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and that Little Mermaid remake, and that’s a damn shame. Even if the movie flops, I’m sure that Kreischer and Hammil will come out of it fine, but my heart bleeds for the rest of the cast and the crew behind the scenes. They took the basis of a comedy special and spun it off into the third best John Wick movie.
Yeah, I said it!
JOHN WICK 3 AND 4 ARE TOO FUCKING LONG!!!
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