Lucha Mexico

MOVIE TITLE: Lucha Mexico

DIRECTORS: Alex Hammond and Ian Markiewicz

YEAR: 2016

GENRE: Pro-Wrestling Documentary

RATING: Unrated, though it contains bloody violence and language

GRADE: Pass

Mexico has always been plagued with poverty, crime, and corrupt politics. The one escape from the country’s negative features has always been Lucha Libre, a high-flying, mask-wearing style of professional wrestling. This documentary takes you behind the scenes of Mexican wrestling from the torturous training to the violently entertaining matches to the dire personal lives of the luchadors. Lucha Libre has a rich history and a colorful culture, but it’s also a business that requires a great deal of toughness in order to survive. Some luchadors become popular and draw in a lot of money. Most of them don’t and they suffer in obscurity. The raw honesty of this filmmaking style is one of this movie’s most prominent features.

The audience can easily get a rich education from watching Lucha Mexico. They can learn how a luchador’s mask can protect private lives and give personality and flavor to the wrestlers wearing them. They can learn the huge differences between Mexican wrestling, which is all about the high flying action, and American wrestling, which is monologue-heavy and slower-paced. They can learn about the risks and rewards of embarking on a professional wrestling career whether it’s getting an injury or becoming wildly popular. By the end of this movie, the viewers will gain a great deal of respect and appreciation for what these athletes have to go through on a day to day basis. The movie will create new wrestling fans and it will rekindle the fire within those already converted. It’s not just “man drama” as UFC commentator Joe Rogan once stupidly called it. It’s a passionate form of entertainment.

Speaking of entertainment, if you want to see delicious and action-packed violence, Lucha Mexico is happy to oblige. Sure, the wrestling matches are in short snippets, but there’s just enough content where the audience can enjoy back flips, slams, top rope dives, and most brutal of all, bloodletting. Yes, from time to time, they actually do hardcore style, which if you’re not a wrestling fan means the luchadors are allowed to use weapons and they will make each other bleed nearly to death for the crowd’s entertainment. No matter what kind of match is taking place, you will either wince in pain or you’ll be on the edge of your seat in anticipation for the big finish. That’s what wrestling is all about: creative storytelling and violent choreography. Again, Joe Rogan, it’s not “man drama”, you fool.

As long as I’m dragging Mr. Rogan’s name through the mud, there’s another thing this movie is good for: debating. The kind of debating I’m talking about is between Mexican and American styles of wrestling. Since Mexican wrestling is more action-oriented, you don’t get a lot of the bigoted promos that American wrestling has been known for over the past two decades. Meanwhile, some American wrestling fans would argue that all villain heat is the same and promos build up more tension between the two battling wrestlers. Both sides of the fence have good points to make and I’m not going to list all of them in this review, because I want my readers to make up their own minds. They can do that when they watch Lucha Mexico since they’re not overly preachy or pushy. It’s just raw, honest filmmaking, that’s all.

In this movie there’s something for everybody, which includes complete laymen. Lucha Mexico will either be a rich educational journey, more pride in being a wrestling fan, or both at the same time. Nobody is walking away from this movie unaffected. If you’re still feeling neutral after all is said and done, you probably sleep in an underground coffin at night. Or you’re Joe Rogan, one of the two. Or maybe you’re both, I don’t know. I give this movie a passing grade for giving my inner wrestling geek a reason to do more back flips and cartwheels than the luchadors themselves. Excellent work!