Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Sergio’ on Netflix, a Bland Biography of a Man Whose Life Was Anything But

Netflix movie Sergio is the feature debut from documentary filmmaker Greg Barker, essentially dramatizing his 2009 nonfiction film of the same name, a profile of late United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Sergio Vieria de Mello. Barker is a former war correspondent whose journalistic films tackle political topics, most recently Barack Obama’s presidency in 2017’s The Final Year. Will his first fiction effort — starring Wagner Moura, who played Pablo Escobar in Narcos — show his obvious passion for his subject?

SERGIO: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Aug. 19, 2003. A blast rocks the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad. Sergio (Moura), critically injured, his legs pinned beneath debris, choking on dust and smoke, flashes back: An image of the golden beach and translucent water of his beloved home, Rio de Janeiro. His partner and co-worker, Carolina Larriera (Ana de Armas), and his security guard Gaby Pichon (Clemens Schick), stagger through the wreckage, bleary and frantic, helping the injured. Another flashback, this time, Sergio’s promise to Carolina, to say no to the next dangerous, all-consuming project that crosses his path — a promise he soon reneges on.

What follows is a love story backed by international tension and unrest, scenes shuffled in an anti-chronology reflecting the protagonist’s memories. The narrative jumps again, to three months prior to the blast. Sergio and Carolina arrive in Baghdad with Gaby and his trusted adviser, Gil Loescher (Brian F. O’Byrne). They see less liberation by U.S. troops, more occupation. Sergio is aghast, and immediately ruffles feathers — especially those of frequently sweaty American military bigwig Paul Bremer (Bradley Whitford) — with the public declaration that the U.N. is not representing America or condoning its actions. He’s a confident man, empowered by more than three decades as a world-famous, highly respected diplomat.

Another jump. Three years prior to Baghdad, he’s in East Timor, negotiating a cease-fire between rebels and their imperialist Indonesian rulers; there, he meets Carolina, an Argentinian economist who takes him to meet women whose lives were destroyed by war, but have now found some stability, working as weavers. They fall in love, reluctantly for her, as he’s married, but frequently absent from the lives of his wife and two adult sons. Cut to the ’90s, in Rio, where he alienates his sons by not knowing the youngest is allergic to shrimp. Cut to Cambodia, where he pulls off a diplomatic coup when he meets with the Khmer Rouge. We see his embarrassments and his triumphs, his life in review, as he suffers from beneath a heap of concrete and twisted metal. An American soldier, William von Zehle (Garret Dillahunt), finds Sergio and Gil in the rubble, but the prospect of survival is bleak.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Superficially, Sergio recalls other documentary-to-biopic projects by one director: Werner Herzog chronicled Vietnam War pilot Dieter Dengler’s prison-camp survival story first as Little Dieter Needs to Fly and fictionalized in Rescue Dawn; Joe Berlinger turned his series Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes into Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. Also, scenes of de Mello buried under rubble are similar to those in Oliver Stone’s 9/11 drama World Trade Center, which starred Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena as first-responders trapped in a collapsed building.

Performance Worth Watching: Future Bond Girl Ana de Armas exhibited extraordinary screen presence in Blade Runner 2049 and Knives Out, and here, she brings a hint of earnest effervescence to some bland, occasionally dour material.

Memorable Dialogue: An old woman who suffered great loss in East Timor says these beautifully poetic words that Sergio later parrots: “I want to fall from the sky like rain and remain forever in the place where I belong.”

Sex and Skin: Some shadowy undressing and lovemaking between Carolina and Sergio in warm, orangey mood lighting. Romantic? Sure. A little indulgent? That too.

Our Take: Sergio is a reasonably compelling biography of a man who was good at work but less so at family, a man dedicated to diplomacy and peace — a complex, righteously principled, sometimes great man. But Barker and screenwriter Craig Borten’s (Dallas Buyer’s Club) final portrait is ultimately muted, affectionate but lacking spirit and intensity. We don’t feel emotionally involved in his political endeavors, and only the immediacy of the scenes deep beneath the bombed building keeps the film from flatlining.

The film heavily emphasizes the Sergio-Carolina romance, and Moura and de Armas share a medium-dim spark, but at least it’s a spark. There’s a touch of poetry in Sergio’s dreams of his beloved Rio, which sort of bookend the story — a story splintered into numerous narrative shards, perhaps artfully, perhaps frustratingly. Sergio lacks dramatic heat and urgency, and its truly engaging moments are fleeting.

Our Call: SKIP IT. I’m on the fence, and all this is just a long way of saying that Sergio is a well-intentioned, thoughtful, but boring movie. It’s fine, but it should be more than that.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Sergio on Netflix