User reviews

Geraldo Sarno's biopic on Brazilian industrialist Delmiro Gouveia (1863-1917) is a manageable good film whose main attraction is the towering powerformance of Rubens de Falco in the leading role and its barely known real life story of a powerful man who faced many dangers and rivalry in order to conduct his textile industries and help developing progress in the Northeast region of Brazil. His success with his factories bothered not only local competitors, who used of their influences with the government and that gave many problems and threats of arrest, but also his factories produced fabric and other products with such efficiency that even a larger British conglomerate felt threatned by him and they took actions as well.

There are many great sequences in this movie - such as Gouveia fights with authorities to the point of even moving to another state and develop his business there; and another more tragic that revolves when he was arrested by the army on a train station and he even though he accepted the initial fate and warned to his gunman to not act against it, the poor gunman was cowardly shot for no reason. And as said, de Falco is powerful in the role and makes audiences forget his famous villainous roles (yet he's the typical colonel as well that if needed he'll kill people too, it's the law of the land); the cast that has Nildo Parente, Joffre Soares, José Dumont and Isabel Ribeiro are all commendable too - but the movie didn't got much as a memorable experience, sometimes losing itself in giving us a wider context as why this man never managed to make partnership with any local government.

I understand that for one, when there was an economical crisis that all businessman raised their prices and he was the only who didn't, preferring to help the population without profitting, it's a little obvious why he was hated. For someone of his magnitude, any government would want to invest in some partnership profitable for both sides - there's a scene that somewhat explains that the government wasn't interested in this so magnificent project of evolution. I think that the political aspect should have been presented in a better way rather than one scene. I know it's just politics and the law of the strongest in economy, but it'd benefit the film a lot more than showing his risky romances.

Other than that, I loved seeing the story of a real patriot in the sense of someone who's working towards the improvement of his country and its people, and not just a greedy man as his rivals were, always working against the people and filling their pockets. That's the great lesson I got from this movie...and that when one works towards such a great cause you're gonna upset a lot of people on the way. 6/10.