Wasp Network

UK Release Date. 19 June 2020
Certification. 15
Running Time. 2 hours 7 mins
Director. Oliver Assayas
Cast. Ana de Armas, Gael Garcia Bernal, Penélope Cruz, Wagner Moura, Edgar Ramírez, Leonardo Sbaraglia.
Rating. 31%

Review.

For the most part, I enjoyed the first hour of Wasp Network. What started off as an intriguing political thriller, rich in detail and based on real-life events imploded when director Olivier Assayas unveiled one of the most clumsy expositions I have seen in a long while. Deploying a flashback to four years prior to current events and introducing yet another new character, Gerardo Hernandez (Gael Garcia Bernal), the director painfully recaps and repositions the preceding hour.

Based on Fernando Morais' The Last Soldiers Of The Cold War: The Story Of The Cuban Five, Wasp Network opens with an intriguing set-piece. Seemingly without warning, pilot René Gonzalez (Edgar Ramirez) leaves his family behind and defects from Cuba to Miami. What his wife, Olga (an impressive Penélope Cruz), and the audience, doesn't know is that René is actually part of the Wasp Network, a group of state-funded intelligence agents sent to infiltrate anti-government groups within the exile community in the US. Groups such as Brothers To The Rescue, a humanitarian organisation that helps refugees make the dangerous crossing of the Straits of Florida, but has potential links with the drug trade and a series of bombings of Havana hotels.

Instead of focussing on the personal drama between René and Olga, Assayas seems intent on plotting out a vast, sprawling and complex historical retrospective. The result is a shapeless, tedious mess, which is highly confusing at times. So much so, that the film has to pause twice to sum up and explain events through voiceover and montage. The incoherent screenplay drifts haphazardly back and forth between an array of characters - characters enter and disappear without a blink of an eye. A curious romance between Juan Pablo Roque (Wagner Moura) and a luminous and attractive Cuban-American, Ana Magarita Martinez (Ana de Armas) culminates in a lengthy and entirely superfluous wedding scene, reminiscent of The Godfather, before Juan flees back to Cuba and Ana disappears from the remainder of the film entirely. 

The resulting narrative is dense and impenetrable - worse still, rather bland and banal, especially considering the storyline involves the impassioned conflict for the soul of a country. But what a country! The appeal of Wasp Network is all too apparent - it is the sumptuous shots of a weathered Havana. Heat-baked, colourful, open spaces, elegantly shot and populated with beautiful actors. Memories of the Malécon and La Bodeguita Del Medio come flooding back.