South of the Border

Leading with footage of Fox News and its right-wing cohorts acting foolish, South of the Border seems to aim for populist agitprop a la Michael Moore. But Moore, for all his faults, is rarely sycophantic, and though this avoids Comandante’s chummy pointlessness, Oliver Stone does little to restore his blunted reputation. If Stone’s aim was to counter US attempts to characterise an uncooperative southern hemisphere as a threat, then he succeeds. But painting Hugo Chavez with the depth and nuance of a Che T-shirt hardly does the subject justice, nor do encounters with other South American leaders, so brief there’s barely time to patronisingly ask Argentina’s Kirchner how many shoes she owns or film Evo Morales playing football. We learn Chavez’s baseball position (pitcher) and bed-time (3am), but the elephant in the room – Venezuela’s human rights record – is ignored with a shrug that Columbia’s is worse; perhaps, but that doesn’t absolve Chavez, nor does it absolve Stone of missed opportunities. [Chris Buckle]