This isn’t The Mother.

I accidentally started watching La Madre under the misunderstanding that I was watching The Mother, a 2023 film, but that Tubi just had released the film in Mexico. After a little bit of not seeing Jennifer Lopez anywhere, I decided to sit back and watch the rest of the movie. We’ll get to The Mother sometime in one of the upcoming reviews. But more on that in another review.

La Madre is a made-for-TV movie that got thrown up on Tubi, so naturally the film has no critic reviews to speak of and absolutely zero ratings on IMDB from anyone. Actually there is one review on the internet from Heaven of Horror, and they didn’t like it all that much. So we know two people have watched the movie not counting the production crew. This film was directed by Mitchell Altieri, a guy whose film bio contains a very strange host of films over the last eighteen years.

All you need to know about La Madre can be summed up with one sentence; it’s Taken but with a woman but with less violence. Tamara Mazarrasa plays Martha, a woman who owns a shop and has a strained relationship with her two daughters. Martha treats one of her daughters too hard and the other one too soft. Raquel (Lucía Tinajero) wants to go off to college but is stuck at home helping out at the shop. Eva (Giovanna Reynaud) is treated like a child and also is a walking stereotype of every victim girl from kidnapping PSAs and is one parody step way from introducing herself by describing her favorite flavor of roofie.

Giovanna was in a series called “Daddies On Request” which despite the name I’m told is not a Bang Bros production.

Eva is kidnapped by Mexican drug cartels looking to sell her ass on the market by the pound, and it’s up to Martha to rescue her daughter. Astoundingly this is where the film subverted my expectations because we get a glimpse of Martha’s past life as a badass gangbanger and you think she’s going to go all ass whoopin. And she does, to a certain extent. But she also gets the upper hand by working with the cops a lot. Javier Dulzaides plays Juan Cinderos and I thought given their chemistry that he and Martha were going to bone down at some point. Also he’s kind of a hunk.

The standout performance here without a doubt is Alex Guerrero as El Chacal which the film repeatedly reminds us means The Jackal. It’s too bad nobody is going to watch La Madre because Guerrero presents himself as a seasoned actor despite having a single short film from 2020 under his belt. El Chacal commands the scenes and while he’s never shown as being more than human, he can be both powerful and intimidating whether he’s speaking softly or raising his voice. He’s one of the few people in this film I felt really got into their roles.

I have a feeling Guerrero has a long future playing the role of very Mexican villain, but damnit if he doesn’t have the potential to be the TV movie Danny Trejo. Just the right combination of camp and passion. He’s certainly going on my must-watch list, assuming he ever acts again. Have your agent hit up Robert Rodriguez, Alex, I have a feeling he could use you in an upcoming film.

My only complaint with this movie is that it’s a dollar store version of the same story we’ve seen a billion times before. The flat camera shots really make everything feel dull and slow, and the soundtrack is your bog standard made for TV stuff. It’s not poorly written enough to be cringey, but it’s not over the top enough to be considered b-tier schlock. I get the feeling the director/writer really thought they were doing something big with this.

Ultimately though it’s just above middling, saved only by Alex Guerrero.

Rating: C+