The Infiltrators Available On Demand on June 2 on Amazon Prime
Film Review By Roberto Leal
The Infiltrators is not a Hollywood blockbuster about an elite team of undercover cops who infiltrate drug cartels, the Klan or socialist PTA meetings in San Francisco. As the old saying goes: Truth is stranger than fiction. The Infiltrators filmmakers, Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra, have crafted a little gem of a story that features heroes equal to any in the Marvel Comic Book Universe.
In 1973, the world hailed the publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. Solzhenitsyn’s book detailed the horrors of the Soviet Union’s vast prison system that locked up political dissidents, like Solzhenitsyn, homosexuals and other social misfits. A self-righteous America pointed an accusatory finger at the Soviet Union and bragged: “Thank God, we’re not like that!”
Fast forward to present day America along our southern border and witness the explosive growth of for-profit (because we’re capitalist, not communists) detention centers where up to 40,000 undocumented immigrants languish, often for years, in what can rightly be called The Latino Gulag Archipelago.
The Infiltrators tells the true, inspiring story of young, undocumented Dreamers, who intentionally let themselves be taken by the Border Patrol, to a detention center in Broward County, Florida, where undocumented immigrants await deportation. The Dreamers, as members of the National Immigration Youth Alliance (NIYA), use protests, online petitions, and pressure on local politicians, to stop the deportations of the detainees, who are being held for minor offenses.
We follow Marco (Maynor Alvarado) as he covertly works in the detention center to stop deportations and secure releases. The mild-mannered, but resolute Marco must maneuver carefully to avoid his cover being blown and winding up in solitary confinement and obscurity.
When Marco finds out there are 100 women being held in the detention center, the NIYA team on the outside decide to send Viridiana (Chelsea Rendon) inside to coordinate the Dreamer’s mission with Marco. Complications arise when Marco and Viridiana are found out by the Border Patrol. Afterall, The Infiltrators is a thriller. What would a thriller be without obstacles, danger and complications?
But the Infiltrators, which won the Next Section Audience Award at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, has won critical acclaim for its brilliant cross genre approach in creating a powerful documentary/thriller. It’s an effective story-telling technique. Oliver Stone did it successfully in JFK (1991). Rob Reiner’s rockumentary, Spinal Tap, (1994), used it to great comic effect. But the makers of The Infiltrators, have taken the documentary/narrative film structure, and to quote Emeril Lagasse, “kicked it up a notch.”
The real-life documentary footage of the Dreamers protesting outside the detention center and the re-enactments of the actual events inside, have been masterfully and seamlessly edited together into one cohesive whole. At no point in The Infiltrators can you tell where the documentary ends, and the re-enactment begins. This is a tribute to the first-rate editing and cinematography.
In any good thriller, pacing is an important factor. However, the suspense and tension cannot be too constant or hyperbolic, or the effect is lost. But the amount of suspense and tension must be just enough, and the plot points strategically placed to keep the audience in their seats for the narrative ride.
Directors Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra surely must be acolytes of The Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock. Like Hitchcock, Rivera and Ibarra deftly combine the musical score, understated acting, along with excellent pacing, to allow the suspense to play out in an even-handed and measured way
I was glad to see that screenwriters Alex Rivera and Aldo Velasco avoided the temptation to paint the Border Patrol and Guards as cartoonish, evil villains. Of course, the Border Patrol and detention center Guards are uniformly big, imposing characters who can quickly turn tough and menacing when the situation calls for it.
Conversely, the Dreamers are not portrayed as annoyingly noble, altruistic, goody-two-shoes. Maynor Alvarado’s performance, as Marco, is especially noteworthy. Marco is a bookish type who is more suited to infiltrating a public library, not a hostile immigrant detention center. Marco is quiet and unassuming, but he’s absolutely committed to the mission of the Dreamers and the NIYA.
Alvarado, a veteran of TV shows like, Gray’s Anatomy, NCIS: Los Angeles and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, can do a lot just with his eyes. When Marco shows up at the door of the detention center to intentionally get himself taken in by the Border Patrol, his face clearly reveals his anxiety and inner conflict. Maynor Alvarado’s Marco is the kind of hero you find yourself enthusiastically rooting for.
Chelsea Rendon (Viridiana) made her feature film debut at the tender age of 7, in No Turning Back, a role which garnered her several awards. She is currently a series regular on VIDA hit drama on the Starz Network. Rendon has perfected her craft in a wide range of TV and film roles. What I liked best about Rendon’s performance of Viridiana is the sheer lack of artifice. She’s obviously a natural born actress. You are never aware that Rendon is acting. She is Viridiana.
The supporting cast adds depth, texture and authenticity to The Infiltrators. My only criticism of The Infiltrators is why wasn’t it made into a feature length film or a mini-series on Netflix? Everything eventually winds up on Netflix. As a struggling screenwriter, I’d love to be on the writing staff of The Infiltrators mini-series. Oh well, I guess that makes me a very old Dreamer.
In the opening scene of The Infiltrators, we hear Marco, in voice-over narration say: “Last year, I was reading Kafka. This year, I’m living it.”
The Infiltrators ends on the night of the 2016 presidential election. Marco’s statement has proven to be painfully prophetic. The hateful, racist policies of the Incredible Hoax, currently occupying the White House, has turned our southern border into a disgraceful chain of concentration camps that would turn Eichmann green with envy.
Now, with the specter of the Trumpvirus infecting the immigrants imprisoned down there, we need heroes, like Marco and Viridiana and the NIYA, to spring into action and do their thing, so I can have material to write the screenplay to The Infiltrators: The Sequel.
The Infiltrators is an Oscilloscope Laboratories release. Due to the Trumpvirus Pandemic that has put the kibosh on folks going to the movies, the theatrical premiere date is still TBD. However, The Infiltrators will be available On Demand on June 2.