Wasp Network

There are times in which Wasp Network feels like a John le Carré tale drenched in Miami sun, or even a serious-minded “Top Gun” variant. But it’s also a provocative demonstration of how strange life can get when the political and the personal intertwine like roots of a mammoth tree.

One can see the craftsmanship and skill with actors that Assayas has honed for the last three decades in the film’s best moments, even if it adds up to something of a disappointment when compared to the majority of his filmography.

The latest film from the prolific Olivier Assayas’ makes for a genial, lolloping ride, but it’s also one that will frustrate those with little patience for the script’s casual attitude to coherence.

The initial hour is a tightly wound piece of directorial surveillance in Assayas’ trademark style, fluidly tracking the obscure motives and movements of the characters. The rest is a lot less compelling.

Assayas becomes so subservient to the sheer volume of events and information he must bring to life that the film completely subsumes any sense of personal style or voice.

An overstuffed espionage thriller that bites off more than it can chew and never manages to find its footing, Olivier Assayas’ Wasp Network is an exceedingly rare gaffe from one of the greatest filmmakers of the last 30 years. Even so, his restless genius can still be felt percolating below the surface and struggling to come up for air.

The thrill of watching an Olivier Assayas movie is that you often have no idea where it’s going next. This time out, it seems, neither does he.

Olivier Assayas is a director who's not afraid to tackle different set of ranges of drama and tension in his films and most of the time he has been successful, but with Wasp Network he failed notably by presenting a film that feels ambitious, yet it never gets to exploit properly its most interesting elements. His most recent installment, is an adaptation of the book The Last Soldiers of the Cold War. The story is about a group of spies that infiltrated various Cuban-American groups in the 90s. So it goes without saying the story was quite interesting and above all had the additional advantage of being a true story. Wasp Network is a film that feels that was intended to be more complex but cannot deliver and becomes an experience full of irregularity. Not only did it fail to become a better drama but it also falls short of becoming a much more thrilling story despite having the elements to do it. The cast may be enough to draw audiences, but Assayas doesn't give them much to explore. The film lacks depth despite having a dense narrative, and gets to a point where perspective is somewhat lost considering the implications and political scenario of the events surrounding the characters' actions. It was a good idea but the execution didn't feel right.

Don't waste your time. Historically inaccurate propaganda. You won't be educated, you will be left confused. And in today's already misleading and confusing political climate and tensions, people need to be educated with the truth and not with lies.

This is trash! defamatory to hermanos al rescate free cubans saving other cubans from dying in the ocean, just cuban communist propaganda

It is based on a true story but alters and manipulates the facts. As a cinema it is a disaster. Garbage.

Lying version of the story where figures from Miami's historic exile are ridiculed, an affront to the pain of the mothers and family of the victims of "Brothers to the rescue". Bad performances, poor photography ... waste of time in seeing a story badly told and of very bad production.