Unlimitedia Sick Product of a Sick System

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

The Couchpotatoes Again the score on IMDb is way too low for this biography. The movie deserves a way higher rating then it actually has. Michael Peña played the role of Cesar Chavez brilliantly. From the first minute until the end you are completely absorbed by the story of this civil rights fighter. A non-violent fighter that deserves a lot of respect for what he has done for the poor, fighting the system and the rich elite in this corrupted world. It's thanks to men like him that poor people get their voice heard. Too bad the world has not more men like Cesar Chavez because we seriously need more of those. It's time that the rich become lesser rich and the poor lesser poor.

bigcodyjack The movie in its way distorts the Cesar's Chavez and his impacts. No doubt Chavez was a charismatic figure and because of that Big Labor used him to create the UFW. Chavez was Labor's puppet. He did what they wanted him to do. He was non-violent because Labor did not want violence. To Big Labor violence was something that belonged to the commies and Labor didn't want violence to characterize their efforts to create another cash cow in a farm workers union. So Labor manipulated Chavez and because he saw the benefits of being Labor's stooge, he went along with it. Not that he didn't also believe that it would benefit his beloved farm workers too. Without the backing of big labor, Chavez would have gone nowhere. He was poorly educated, almost an illiterate itinerant. But to his credit he listened to Big Labor and he succeeded. It was Big Labor that had the power in Sacramento and with the government, not Chavez. However, Chavez's claims of success are somewhat dimmed by the fact that while it successfully with the help of Big Labor did get some reforms enacted into law, members of the UFW get socked for dues that support well paid union executives that have in the end delivered little for the workers. And many farm workers still don't belong to the UFW which they do not see any reason to belong to.Unfortunately, the movie is very selective in what it portrays of Chavez so as not to diminish his image. Hopefully someday someone will write the true story of Chavez and bring it to the screen so the public can form its own judgment concerning his importance to Latinos.

Markus Emilio Robinson Would it be weird to say that "Cesar Chavez" was a laugh riot? Well, for a film which depicts people being beaten and sprayed with pesticides, the script contained tons of laugh out loud lines of dialogue. OK, I'm not sure if that came off as completely insensitive or not, so I'll just move on: An independent production directed by Mexican actor/filmmaker Diego Luna, "Cesar Chavez" is an educational partial biography of (you guessed it) Cesar Chavez which chronicles his participation in the California (and abroad) civil rights campaigns during the 1960's, which addressed fair wages and better working conditions for migrant farm workers, his infamous 25 day hunger strike and the UFWA (United Farm Workers of America) grape boycott.While I did find myself really enjoying this movie, "Cesar Chavez" is yet another example of a PG-13 film which attempts to depict a rated-R snapshot of American history. On a technical level, Luna does display above average directorial chops and his film is overall more historically weighty than something like last year's "42" (a PG-13 movie which glossed over many of the more violent atrocities of racial intolerance in the 1940's) it is obvious that Luna does pulls some punches in an attempt to make the Cesar Chavez story accessible to a wider audience.There are good biopics and there are bad biopics. The downfall of many biopics is that they take fascinating characters and simply tell their story, while failing to bring their world to life, failing to spark interest with an engaging back-story or failing to build an emotional connection with audiences. And while those types of biopics may be interesting to some, they usually alienate those who didn't live through the events or may not be familiar with said character. Luna and Michael Pena, who plays Chavez, seem to understand this, as they come together to depict a Chavez that is completely 3 dimensional and complex. That said, Luna does not escape my praise without scrutiny, as he and screenwriters Keir Pearson (Hotel Rwanda) and Timothy J. Sexton (Children of Men) fail to give Chavez much of a back-story; so much so that it feels as though "Cesar Chavez" is missing its entire first act (the story of how Chavez started down the civil rights road to begin with).Pena's performance stands as one of the more surprisingly pleasant aspects of this production. He nails the Chavez look and mannerisms, and when he speaks he sounds like a civil rights leader. And during the fasting sequences, Pena looks like a man who hasn't eaten for a substantial amount of time. Although quite enjoyable in other movies such as "End of Watch" and "30 Minutes or Less", his role as Chavez is by far my favorite.Final Thought: This shouldn't be a movie which only resonates with those who lived through the events, but if you have no idea who Chavez was going into this, for you the timeline may get a little choppy in the final act and questions may be raised about Rosario Dawson's purpose in this movie since Dolores Huerta (a woman who played a massive role in La Causa) is hardly referenced here. Then again, if you are a Californian and don't know who Cesar Chavez was, you should be ashamed of yourself to begin with. After recently sitting through a stretch of shockingly below average movies depicting the Mexican/Mexican-American/Chicano struggle (Filly Brown, For Greater Glory and A Better Life) I will say that I was quite entertained by this good, not great, biopic which salutes this important man and equally important moment in relatively recent California history.

larry-962-91121 Having just seen the movie and having met the man many years ago,I can say that the film was better than most of the reviews I have read. This was a very humble man that saw an injustice and corrected it. He didn't line his own pockets like most Union Leaders have. I would have preferred to see more of his upbringing so that we know who influenced him the most. Nonetheless, this film (docudrama) should be required viewing in public schools throughout California and other states where farm workers supply our nation and the world with much of our produce. A must see movie if you want to understand what the migrant workers were up against in the 60's and 70's.