La red avispa

Because much of my joy in reliving history is through cinema, I eagerly went to Netflix to experience writer/director Olivier Assayas's Wasp Network (with writer Fernando Morais as well). Having never thought about the spies in the 90's who infiltrated the anti-Castro movement in Florida, I now have a vivid picture of them and their heroic, self-sacrificing for communist Cuba.

This sometimes-incoherent docudrama (just too many spies dancing in the espionage world with nary a pause to figure if they're working for the rebels, the Cuban government, or the FBI). Olga Salaneuva (Penelope Cruz), wife of ace pilot for the Cuban government, Rene Gonzalez (Edgar Ramirez), who secretly infiltrates the rebels without her knowing, provides a dramatic glue as she interacts also with other recruits for the government through her husband.

Gerardo Hernandez (Gael Garcia Bernal) is responsible for supervising the spies in Florida into the Wasp Network. Already you can see my challenge making coherent an unwieldy assembly of heroes and scalawags-I have yet to adequately assess the worth of the film.

I'm going to do that now while I have much else of the plot left undone: The excellent cast and the stellar DP's (Yorick Le Saux and Denis Lenoir) have reminded us what a romantic and troubled island Cuba has been since Fidel Castro began his long rule. With cooperation from Cuba, the colorful decadence and charming decay of that festive nation are on display. Old American cars and shabby multicolored buildings create the perfect metaphor for the revolution with its romantic aspirations and real-time rationing of food and gas, enough to make emigration to the US a realistic goal.

Assayas has too much to cover, but what he does, when you factor out the excessive time given to domestic challenges and even a wedding, is fascinating to see how much these spies have given up for Cuba. The history is well known-The spies are caught and mostly turn on each other to accept the FBI's plea deals.

Communists still rule Cuba, and it suffers from the sanctions the Us has firmly held since Castro. In spite of that relatively poor profile, people are willing to sacrifice for Cuban ideals by joining the Wasp Network-and it stings. The movie, however, is historically and visually balm for the history-loving cinephile.

I live very far away from the American hemisphere, I dunno much about the politics involved with the Wasp Network and my knowledge on the historical accuracy of the incident shown is virtually zero. As a movie fan of military and espionage trillers, I found Wasp Network very neat, engaging and in fact thrilling at places. In fact knowing nothing about the incident prior actually worked in my favour, in terms of enjoying this spy flick.

Cinematography was good overall, especially the Ariel photography involving multiple aircraft. Screenplay was very good too, though it had lot of choppy cuts in the middle affecting the smoothness of the story's flow. Direction, music and makeup were all par. Considering the budget of Wasp Network, Production design and costumes were excellent. Though the movie boasted some big names among the cast like Wagner Moura and Penolope Cruz, acting in general was good, with nothing exceptional.

Overall, sans any knowledge about the incident involved in the movie, I enjoyed the movie. It was very engaging throughout and in fact gripping at some places. I would definitely recommend this movie to action movie fans around the world, for a wonderful Sunday afternoon watch. Wasp Network is definitely one of the better Netflix Original movies, in a series of recent duds. 6.9 stars out of 10 for Wasp Network's ability to spring surprises.

Many people here gave this movie a bad review because they don´t agre with it´s political views. I think that´s dumb. The movie is bad because it´s BORING and it doesn´t care about what it´s telling. Not because it might be historically innacurate or not being anti-castro enough!

BTW, Lots of hollywood movies despict historical events wrong or tergiversed but nobody seems to care this much, usually because they like that version more. They only care about the "agenda" in a movie when it´s different from their own, not when there is one.

Without getting onto the political correctness of the film, it was fairly entertaining but lacked direction. The narrative was confusing at times and certain stories seemed to be forgotten or abandoned half way through

After reading a lot of reviews I didn't expect this film would offer much. It was a bit confusing and disjointed but I enjoyed exploring the context of the film and really enjoyed the story of Rene and his family.