In the last few weeks then, a number of new feature films have landed at Netflix - of which I review as below 'Wasp Network' which went live on the streaming service on 19th June and which I saw from the comfort of my own sofa on Sunday 21st June.'WASP NETWORK' is Directed and written for the screen by Olivier Assayas, the French film maker whose previous credits include 2016's 'Personal Shopper' for which he collected the Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival, 2014's 'Clouds of Sils Maria' and 2010's 'Carlos' amongst others. Based on the 2011 book 'The Last Soldiers of the Cold War' written by Fernando Morais this is the true story of the 'Cuban Five'. The film saw its World Premier screening at the Venice Film Festival in early September last year and thereafter at TIFF, the San Sebastien International Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, and the BFI London Film Festival before its release in France in late January this year. Picked up by Netflix in January for distribution on its streaming service, the film has garnered mixed or average Reviews so far.
It is 1990, Havana, Cuba and we meet Rene Gonzalez (Edgar Ramirez), his wife Olga (Penelope Cruz) and their six year old daughter Irma (Carolina Peraza Matamoros). Rene works as a pilot of light aircraft taking parachute jumpers up to circa 13,000 feet and seeing them skydive back down to the ground. It's a living, but he longs for more. After his shift, he goes home to his loving family, and the next day wakes up to complete the same routine all over again. Saying farewell to Olga and Irma in the morning, he drives out to the airport, walks up to the air traffic control tower, sabotages the two way radios, and steals a plane and flies to Miami, Florida to begin a whole new life, leaving his family behind. Quizzed by authorities and the press as to the reason why he has defected, he gives a rational explanation of how he's had it with the authoritarian Castro regime and how Castro's days are numbered with the crippled Soviet Union funding drying up. He goes on to say that he was born in the US and therefore has citizenship, and soon is taken in by a group of Cuban exiles and opponents of the Castro regime and given three months of free accommodation and hooked up with some influential people who offer him a job as a pilot.
Juan Pablo Roque (Wagner Moura), another Cuban pilot, also defects by swimming to Guantanamo Bay and seeks political asylum at the US Naval Base there. He is granted asylum and arrives in Miami, where shortly afterwards he is introduced to recently divorced Ana Martinez (Ana de Armas). He is also offered a job as a pilot flying for Brothers to the Rescue and CANF, and engaged in various nefarious deeds which pays him very well, as well as being a paid FBI Informer at US$1500 a week, but which he refuses to tell Ana the source of his money, and adds further that he doesn't tell her everything about him. She also asks why is he carrying around a cell phone (remembering that in the early '90's cellphones were only just emerging on the market), and he makes up some excuse to shield her from the truth. Despite such altercations and differences of opinion, they seemingly hit it off and soon enough are married in a very lavish wedding.About half way through the film we first hear mention of the Wasp Network - a secret Cuban governmental organisation tasked with the highly confidential mission of infiltrating the Miami based paramilitary groups dedicated to reversing the damage inflicted by Fidel Castro's rule over Cuba. The Wasp Network is directed by Gerardo Hernandez aka Manuel Viramontez (Gael Garcia Bernal). As agents working for both sides, the members of the Wasp Network, the Cuban Five (Gerardo Hernandez, Rene Gonzalez, Ramon Labanino, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando Gonzalez of which the latter three go unmentioned in this film) who had left Cuba and arrived in South Florida to great shakes as they voiced their opinions against the actions of the Cuban government, but back home, those families and friends of the five were placed in at times compromising and awkward positions and made outcasts because of their connection to the apparent traitors.
While the Wasp Network worked undercover, the American government continued its own investigation into the Cuban presence stateside. In February 1996, three Brothers to the Rescue Cessna light aircraft take off from Miami. Flying over Cuban airspace as they had done countless times in recent years, they receive a warning from the Cuban military that they are at risk. Choosing to ignore these warnings, this time two Cuban Air Force MiG fighter jets take down two of the aircraft carrying a total four personnel. The third aircraft flown by Basulto escaped. The day before the shootdown Roque turns his back on his marriage to Ana and returns to Cuba stating publicly that he was a mole who worked to infiltrate anti-Castro organisations. When asked in a live TV interview what he misses most about his life in Miami he says his Jeep Cherokee, while Ana is watching him on screen from Florida - gobsmacked!
After a few years of cutting through lots of red tape and jumping through governmental hoops, Olga and Irma are finally permitted to leave Cuba and join Rene in Miami. Before doing so Viramontez meets with Olga and advises her that her husband is in fact no traitor, but more a hero. He confides in her that Rene is in fact a Cuban intelligence agent who successfully infiltrated CANF, and for the sake of herself, her husband and daughter, her family, friends, himself, the Cuban establishment and the Wasp Network she must maintain this secret to herself and not discuss it with anyone, under any circumstances. She agrees and leaves the office, and the next day is on a plane with Irma (now played by Osdeymi Pastrana Miranda) bound for Florida.
With the three reunited in Miami, it's not long before Olga finds steady work and Irma settles into school, and shortly thereafter Olga announces that she is pregnant with their second daughter, whom they intend calling Ivette. Meanwhile, in El Salvador, Raul Cruz Leon (Nolan Guerra Fernandez) in mid-1997 is recruited by anti-Castroists to place C4 bombs in four Havana hotels - The Copacabana, the Hotel Capri, the Hotel Nacional de Cuba and the Melia Cohiba Hotel with the aim of destabilising the recently resurgent Cuban tourist industry. Whilst the four bombs all successfully detonated in September 1997 there was only one fatality - that of an Italian tourist at the Copacabana and eleven other injuries. The very same day Leon is apprehended by the Cuban Police while exiting another hotel where he was due to collect his money for a job well done - money that he never saw! Thereafter the Wasp Network abandons Leon to his own fate. Carriles admitted to organising the bombings but was never prosecuted. 
Finally, some months later by which time Olga has given birth to baby Ivette, the FBI closes in on the Wasp Network and arrests the whole network of agents including Rene Gonzalez and Manuel Viramontez. Combined they face charges of conspiracy to commit espionage, conspiracy to commit murder, acting as an agent of a foreign government, drug and gun running and a few other US deemed illegal activities. In a TV interview Fidel Castro admits to his knowledge of Cuban intelligence agents operating on US soil.
While serving out his jail term, Rene is visited often by Olga. He is offered a plea deal by the FBI in exchange for information but refuses to inform on his colleagues and his government. He serves twelve years in prison and was released in late 2011. Olga was arrested and served three months in jail, before being reunited with her daughters and deported back to Cuba. Manuel Veramontez was sentenced to a double life sentence but was freed after fifteen years as part of a spy swap. Raul Cruz Leon is still serving a thirty year jail term for planting the four Havana bombs and Carriles died in 2018, aged 90. Juan Pablo Roque never flew again and had financial difficulties, while his estranged wife Ana sued the Cuban government for punitive damages amounting to US$27M, but has only ever received about US$200K.I found 'Wasp Network' largely underwhelming which is a disappointment given the credibility and what we're used to from Writer and Director Assayas and his assembled all star cast consisting of Cruz, Ramirez, de Armas, Bernal and Moura. This is a muddled film where the whole is not equal to the sum of its parts, as its offers up too many plot contrivances and then leaves you hanging in mid-air without any closure as it ebbs and flows between too many characters, situations and locations to make for a coherent story. On the positive front, the production values are well realised with some stunning aerial photography of the corridor between US and Florida, shots of Havana from the air and the vibe of the early '90's are all captured thoughtfully. The principle cast especially Cruz as the initially abandoned then all forgiving and loyal dutiful wife, and Ramirez as the focused stoic double agent is so much better here than he was in 'The Last Days of American Crime' reviewed here just two weeks ago, give admirable performances, but the others are all undercooked. And despite all the sabre rattling, political intrigue and the ongoing strain of US/Cuban relations, Castro remained in power as President until 2008 and remained in office until 2011, which makes you wonder what was it all for anyway?
'Wasp Network' merits two claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps.
-Steve, at Odeon Online-
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