American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez

Alvarado’s doc is standard in construction but lively in tone, reflecting his subject’s engagement with the sociopolitical challenges faced by Chicanos in the 20th century.

Understanding the life and work of Luis Valdez is a way to broaden one’s understanding of what it means to be American, perhaps now more than ever. Watching this enlightening and entertaining documentary is a good way to start.

While the film falls into the same pitfalls most celebrity documentaries are bound to repeat, Alvarado not only crafts a suitable tribute to one of the more underappreciated artists in American history but also shines a light on a subset of Latino culture that deserves its time in the limelight.

Timeliness is a poor metric for evaluating nonfiction, and in most respects “American Pachuco” is a boilerplate “American Masters”-style overview of an artist’s life. But in a moment of revanchist white supremacy, Valdez’s lifelong thesis . . . and his undiminished assertion that Chicano art is as American as it gets is difficult not to find rousing and as defiant as it was in the 1960s.

If American Pachuco leaves you wanting more, perhaps that's not a bad thing; Valdez deserves the last word, anyway, and he's not finished.

“American Pachuo” is just a nice movie about a visionary guy. Entertaining and educational, to be sure, but so frictionless it barely sticks.