Sergio

Barker’s obvious care and respect for his subject makes Sergio stirring to watch. But as Craig Borten’s script leans more and more on romance, the film flounders.

Sergio is not a film about a saint or a sinner, but an attempt that succeeds more often than not to create a portrait of a man in full. Yes, it also occasionally puts him on a pedestal — but in these dark days, advocating for hope and idealism feels exactly right.

The new Sergio isn’t as seamless or as powerful as Barker’s work in the nonfiction arena, but it takes chances and finds some real lyricism along the way.

Sergio’s intentions are pure, and the movie is pleasingly old-school in the way it merges political drama — and tragedy — with romance. Sometimes, though, the burden of playing a dedicated servant of the people appears to be too much for Moura: the performance feels stiff and stately, as if he’s considered every breath. Moura makes us see the gleaming role model, but it’s much harder to see the man underneath — and you can’t leave a legacy without first having had a heartbeat.

There’s no question there is much to admire about both Vieira de Mello and Moura’s soaring portrayal of him, but it’s all buried under the weight of a biopic too afraid to really show the truth about a flawed world, and a flawed man who loved it.

Wagner Moura (Narcos’s Pablo Escobar himself) does what he can as the sturdy Sergio, and the actor has strong, near-instant chemistry with a love interest played by Ana de Armas.

Sergio, a Netflix docudrama directed by Greg Barker from a banal screenplay by Craig Borten, catches flashes of his brilliance from time to time but scatters and dims them through a mosaic structure that’s ultimately no structure at all.

Wanna know what's the biggest mistake of this film? That it takes its audience for fools and believes they will be more interested in a lazy romantic drama rather than the true figure of Sérgio Vieira de Mello. And what I knew about him was tiny but definitely from what I could read, this doesn't do him justice at all. Another Netflix option that isn't going anywhere.

The movie could be better. Too much time spend in some boring scenes. There are great attitudes that make Sergio a good character. I think that I could cry in the ending, but the plot was not developed to connect somehow with the audience.