Wasp Network (2019) is "based on a true story", but its makers may be looking at reality through 'beer goggles.' For example, there is a character played by Ana de Armas, who regardless of her talent – or lack thereof – reminds me of a young Tiffani Amber Thiessen. During the epilogue, however, we are shown a photo of the corresponding real person, and what we see is a thick, plump, buxom, etc., etc. woman, and there is nothing wrong with it just like there is nothing wrong with de Armas being slender; the problem lies in that the truth is manipulated to make it more attractive to the public. If director Olivier Assayas takes such liberty with a supporting character, how do we know what's real and what's a complete fabrication?
In keeping with this pattern, the locations are authentic, but even if the events of the film were equally genuine, Assayas manages to needlessly complicate them. In principle, I have nothing against non-linear stories told non-sequentially, but this script would already be hard to follow, with its espionage and counter-espionage, moles, agents and double-agents, and above all its moral ambiguity and political contradictions. This material calls for simplification, not convolution. I mean, if your movie is a quote-unquote true story, wouldn't you want to push the truth all the way to the foreground? What's the use of knowing what really "happened" if we don't understand how and why it happened?
Having said that, Wagner Moura is perfect for Wasp Network for the same reasons that made him a wrong choice for the title role in Sergio. In both movies he is snooty, arrogant, and shallow; unbecoming characteristics for a noble United Nations diplomat, but which fit his opportunistic character like a glove here – a character who also happens to have the best lines in the movie ([devouring a Big Mac] “after years of eating McCastro's, McDonald's is a delicacy;” or, when a Cuban journalist asks him, while his wife watches the interview from Miami, what he misses most about his life on American soil: [thinks for a moment] "My Jeep Cherokee”).
