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Oct 17, 2014 By Zach Hollwedel Web Exclusive

Simón Bolívar is one of the most influential people in Latin American history. During his 47 year life, he led thousands upon thousands of people in the fight for freedom from Spain, ultimately securing independence for Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. As a politician, he struggled to keep the liberated territories unified and strove for democracy in South America.

Hardly any of this is successfully conveyed in director Alberto Arvelo’s film. Arvelo and with screenwriter Timothy J. Sexton had a near Sisyphean task on their hands in bringing Bolívar’s biography to the screen. The film begins with a younger Bolívar returning to Venezuela from Spain with his new bride. All is well, until yellow fever takes her from him, sending him back to Europe, where he lives in a drunken stupor for a couple years, until a few conversations have him committed to leading a revolution.

Surely, history was nowhere as simple as The Liberator makes it. Time and again, Arvelo and Sexton introduce something, only to immediately have it come to a head in the next scene. Given the breakneck speed at which events unfold, it is hard to fully grasp the importance of each development or, frankly, to care much about them.

Édgar Ramírez is decent as Bolívar, though he does far more bloviating and rallying the troops than any other military leader portrayed on screen in a while. And for a film about a colonel fighting a near constant war, there are few battle scenes to be had. That’s not to say The Liberator—or any cinematic treatment of Simón Bolívar’s life—needs to be a war movie rife with battles, bombs, and blood. Certainly not. A focus on the politics behind all his and his contemporaries’ actions could easily be compelling. However, the filmmakers’ decision to offer a little bit of war and a little bit of politicking leaves a whole lot of little. The Liberator could have been an amazing epic—Bolívar’s story is unfamiliar to many audiences, and the cinematography and scenery are gorgeous—but it is, at best, an abridged SparkNotes of the powerful man’s life.

cohenmedia.net/films/the-liberator

Author rating: 5/10