The Machine

I don't know much about bert kreisher as a stand up comedian and this seems to be the first film he has stared in. This film is fun and funny at times but its not by burt that makes it funny. Its the scary russian characters that are including mark hamil who can only sound like the joker in my head. In this movie burt and his father are kidnapped by an attractive woman named irina. She wants a watch returned to her that was a family hairloom and she believes burt took it. Back in college he was known as the machine and became involed in the russian mob. Its hard to believe this film is actually based on a true story. But anyway acting was good and this film is decent enough as a crime action movie cut out the sort of comedy and its a pefectly fine film still.

The first 20-25 minutes are pretty cheesy/over-the-top setting up the motivation for the plot and getting Bert & his dad into position. But it actually gets fairly watchable after Irina shows up. It's by no means going to win any awards, but if you're a fan of BK & enjoyed this story from his set, you'll probably enjoy watching this enough to not shut it off.

I was pretty dubious on how BK was going to be as an actor, but I was pleasantly surprised once the story left LA. It's a testament to the caliber of talent Mark Hamill that he was able to raise whatever abilities BK came to the table with to a place where you actually feel invested during their scenes.

The ending is also surprisingly engaging and fitting.

Full disclosure, I am russian. Bert is very funny guy and he should stick to comedy. His machine routine was funny enough but it didn't translate well to movie. His story actual story is quite dark, and it goes through very bad time in Russia, but he makes a good humor story of this mess in his standup. Where he makes a funny standup, the movie falls well short of his act. Romanian setting with western actors speaking horrible, bearly understandible Russian, with even worse translation; was the funniest part of the movie for me. Over the top caricature characters can only take movie so far, it needs a good script.

It's a comedy set in Serbia and it's trying to be about Moscow and Russian gangsters and it's incredibly unrealistic and cliché but it does have some originality and a nice message at the end.

However apart from Oleg Taktarov's great cameo (one of the few genuine standouts) there is few other actors playing Russians. This doesn't work for the accents. It's far-fetched and completely unrealistic.

There are very fast edit scenes where Bert is one place then another in an easier location to knock-out a bad guy.

Plot-wise it is very thin. A lady loses her father's watch so kidnaps Bert's daughter and takes him on a joy-ride to get the watch.

Soon the twists and turns of an unpredictable and stupid plotline come forth. It's another low-budget action flick on Netflix when I could have watched something better instead. Dull.

It's also highly-ignorant of the war and Russia's aggression right now and something could have been included in the screenplay. Or better yet it could have been Serbian gangsters then it would have been more honest!

I'm able to switch my brain off and kinda just waltz thru movies that are at that level so it was a solid 5 stars. It's overproduced for what it is and that's probably why I give it a 5, but it's "The Machine" story being milked for what it is, a good story that, as time goes on, start to feel more like an overinflated teenager's story that loses any sense of credibility at all, that is not a great story after all. It's unfortunately the thing that pushed me to realize that I'm getting a bit tired of Bert's inflated ego and that maybe outside of the machine and his forced high pitch laugh, he doesn't have much else to offer.