Wasp Network Review: Suffers from an Inept Narrative Structure!

Wasp Network, based on the book, The Last Soldiers on the Cold War by Fernando Morais, includes a star-studded cast from Penélope Cruz, Édgar Ramírez, to Gael García Bernal, Ana de Armas and Wagner Moura in a 123-minute drama written and directed by Olivier Assayas. Wasp Network Review

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The storyline of the film begins with René Gonzalez (Edgar Ramírez), a Cuban pilot, fleeing to Miami to infiltrate an anti-Castro group, who are plotting to destroy Cuba’s economy by targeting their tourism industry. Based on real events, as the story progresses, the remainder of the film details how René and his team protect their country against terrorists by walking on thin ice, and leaving their friends and family behind.

With a runtime just over two hours and an incoherent narrative structure, Wasp Network struggles with a wide variety of drawbacks, starting with the engagement and the struggle to find this movie entertaining, on the whole. The entire narrative came off as reading an ordinary history book where you could not connect to anything your reading, and in this case, you could not care less with anything happening on-screen. Especially, the storyline and the characters lack portraying the emotion of any kind.

Adding to this cluster, Wasp Network also fails in structuring the storyline intelligibly and had to utilize voice over to piece together a few plot points in various places. The to and fro timeline leaps, the sluggish pacing that only hampers down the quality, and getting distracted from the three-act structure makes this film very challenging to watch despite the production design being on the up and up, the beautiful cinematography and the all-star cast.

Speaking of the cast, although the performances are, for the most part, considerably good, as I mentioned earlier, the lifeless characters do not do any favors to the effort put forth by the actors. However, on the other side, Penélope Cruz portrayed her character exceptionally well and is the most relatable one when compared to others.

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Overall, Wasp Network does not reach it’s expectations and deteriorates when it comes to narrating a decent story that is coherent in terms of the screenplay and the sluggish pace. Besides a few solid performances from the exceptionally talented cast, this movie is not entertaining or engaging enough to sit through for two hours, even though the nationalities of the lead cast span from Spain to Venezuela and Brazil. Watch ‘Wasp Network’ on Netflix here.

Rating – 1.5/5 | Grade – D+

Images via Netflix