"America Undercover" Looking for Fidel (2004)

User Rating:

6.8/10   

Director:

Oliver Stone

Writer:

Oliver Stone (narration)

TV Series:

"America Undercover" (1993)

Original Air Date:

14 April 2004

Genre:

Documentary

Plot:

Oliver Stone's second documentary on/interview with Fidel Castro specifically addresses his country's recent crackdown on Cuban dissidents; namely, the execution of three men who hijacked a ferry to the United States. |

Cast

Jimmy Carter	...	Himself (archive footage)
James Cason	...	Himself (archive footage)
Fidel Castro	...	Himself
Ernesto 'Che' Guevara	...	Himself (archive footage)
Miriam Laeba	...	Herself
Claudia Marquez Linares	...	Herself
Osvaldo Payá	...	Himself
Blanca Reyes	...	Herself
Vladimiro Roca	...	Himself
Filipe Perez Roque	...	Himself (archive footage)
Elizardo Sanchez	...	Himself
Oliver Stone	...	Himself
Juanita Vera	...	Herself (Castro's Interpreter)

Runtime:

USA:57 min | Argentina:57 min (Mar del Plata Film Festival) | 54 min (TV)

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Spanish

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Certification:

Sweden:Btl | Argentina:13 | Spain:T

Filming Locations:

Cuba

Company:

HBO Documentary

Trivia:

This documentary is featured on the Bonus DVD disc included in the Ultimate Oliver Stone Collection, released in 2004.

Movie Connections:

Follows Comandante (2003)

The Autumn of the Patriarch

"Looking for Fidel", by Oliver Stone was made after his other documentary about Castro, "Comandante", showed a more favorable picture of the situation in Cuba. This 2004 film gives us an Oliver Stone asking questions he didn't ask in his previous conversations with the old dictator.

In the documentary one sees an aging figure explaining things that happened after the hijacking of a couple of Cuban aircraft to Florida. Then came the massive jailing of seventy five journalists and political dissidents and the killing of three young black men who commandeered a passenger ferry in which a couple of tourists were the unwilling victims of their attempt to leave the country.

It's ironic to watch the jailed hijackers being asked by Mr. Castro as to what they think would be a fair punishment and one responds maybe twenty years in jail. Mr. Stone offers he would have asked for only five, but the reality is most of them got life terms. Call it justice Cuban style!

Mr. Castro with his usual facility defends his actions as justified. The journalists and dissidents, he claims, are paid by the US government, which he and his regime have maintained all along, so there's nothing new in what he reveals. The confrontation with the would be air pirates show us ten men desperate to leave Cuba for a different kind of life and the myth of the American dream.

The final section of the documentary seems staged. When Mr. Castro comes to a crowd in a Havana block, his fans shout to the camera about how children are being educated, and how they now have computers. Well, knowing full well they can't use those computers to get into a free Internet clearly shows the young woman knows nothing about the subject.

The documentary, while trying to be informative, shows a man at the end of his life who sill has a great ego and doesn't want to let go of the control he has over everything in his homeland and is not willing to give up.