Ariel Winograd’s “A Time For Bravery” (2025) remolds a classic in tame ways. Drawing from and extending Damian Szifron’s 2005 film “Tiempo de valientes,” the remake feels staggeringly pointless. It’s an exercise in banality that ultimately slumps into the Netflix slush of adaptations no one asked for. When the source material is so rich and provocative, you hope at least some of it rubs off. That’s certainly not the case here, strapped to mere imitation instead of clever, cohesive, and satisfying expansion. Diaz and Mariano’s partnership is the hinge for the buddy cop drama to take flight. But it does only in fits and starts.
A Time For Bravery (2025) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
The film is aware that for it to work, it must feed off the energy of its unusual pairing. You have to root for them individually as well as together. The film opens with a violent murder, a shock to the senses. When a boss asks two men if they had slipped details about a secret operation to an outsider, there’s denial, but the falsehood is ripped through. The boss is aware that secrets have been confabulated. Hence, both men are killed. It turns out they were ex-soldiers in the Mexican army. Police officer Diaz is assigned to the task of handling the case. But his mental health has been on the rocks since he discovered his wife’s infidelity.
It’s clearly meddling with his professional skills. All his thinking space is hijacked by grief and terrible reflections spurred by his wife’s affair. So, Mariano Silverstein, a psychoanalyst, is allocated the job of helping Diaz get an emotional grip. Now Mariano too has been locked in a crisis. He hit someone in a car accident and has been given community service. This task, linked to Diaz, is part of the deal. It’s meant to be a brief partnership. Things turn quickly south once Diaz intuits Mariano’s partner’s infidelity, which turns out to be correct. The men bond over the shared misery of fate.
What secrets has Diaz been hiding?
However, Diaz, too, has been unfaithful himself for years. He got emotionally upended just because his wife is now the one cheating on him, which had felt inconceivable to him. He hasn’t coped with the mesh of guilt and bad feelings ensuing after the discovery. It takes Mariano’s gentle insistence for Diaz to open up to his wife about all that he’s hidden. Diaz is terrified of loneliness, furthermore exacerbated by his wife’s affair. Now that he vents it, he feels a lot lighter.
But Mariano, too, is now emotionally fraught, with his wife Diana’s affair. Diaz reassures the therapist, the other way round, in the prevailing circumstance. Mariano is obviously sucked into Diaz’s case. The two men whose bodies had been dumped in a manner resembling an accident were indeed murdered.
Once the duo makes it to a safehouse, they find out from a junior employee, Chucky, that he had been tasked with stealing the truck. He guides them to the restaurant where the job was initially dispatched. The hirer, Lisandro, acts all mysterious and unwilling to part with any information. He reveals himself as an officer of the National Intelligence Agency. Diaz is apprehended behind bars while Mariano is let go.
Who’s behind the NIA scheme?
The head of the NIA, Solares, is himself the syndicate leader. He seeks to engineer nuclear bombs to pitch them to the highest bidder in the black market. Solares had hired the two men who were killed at the film’s start to make off with the containers storing radioactive metal. The whole thing is a big example of systemic cover-up and corruption. Diaz is targeted because the NIA officers know he might be the only loose end in their big scheme. To let him go risks the entire plan’s collapse. Mariano leaps into the scene.
A Time For Bravery (2025) Movie Ending Explained:
Do Mariano and Diaz expose the NIA mastermind?
Mariano shares all that he has discovered with the cops. But the Commissioner himself is helpless. So the other employees band beside Mariano and set out. They arrive at the NIA headquarters, rescuing Diaz and arresting Solares. The group flies to the Camarasa factory, where the theft of uranium is halted as well. Hence, the big scheme is successfully extirpated.
Solares is a cog in a bigger edifice. Another officer of the NIA proposes to recruit Diaz and Mariano. The latter is unwilling when Diaz drops the hint that Mariano might be a spy. But the latter reiterates he’s not one. At least, Diaz is very much revved to join the intelligence agency, while Mariano is still tentative. The ending sets the stage for speculation around a sequel where the partnership would likely continue.
A Time For Bravery (2025) Movie Review:
When you are remaking a classic, you really do need to stretch boundaries, play freely and boldly with the clay. Otherwise, it’d just be a banal echo of previous, familiar brilliance. The film suffers from a lack of appetite and imagination. It doesn’t want to push deeper into uncharted waters, smug within the known precincts. What rescues the film to some extent is the competent handling of the action, which the remake is keener on than the original. It’s neat, crisp, and not slovenly, which often plagues films cut from such cloth.
The problem is that the film never rises to becoming essential, bracing, and daring. Hence, the stakes are reduced despite the actors and situations being compelling, energetic, and committed. There’s no urgency in the film despite escalating crises. You watch things fall apart and couldn’t be less bothered. The screenplay bears the need to expedite dramatic moments without a natural flow, easing the scenes.
Complications are engineered, not seamlessly trotted out. The central duo does get your attention and empathy, but the rest of the drama tends to be unaccompanied and uninspired. It feels like the makers didn’t care about the peripheral action or the characters around the leads, which drains the plot of energy. The tension only rises mildly and is dismissed just as quickly.
Mendez and Villegas are both captivating and drum up a fine rapport. They are a pleasure to watch and anchor the whole thing through its roughest, clumsiest patches. They are a chief reason why the film hooks and rivets, if at all it does. If their partnership had been unpersuasive, the film would have collapsed. However, the mingling of violence and consolation isn’t as fluid as the makers aim for.
“A Time for Bravery” strains under the weight of jarring exertions, ill-timed efforts to make a bond resonate through dilemmas and crises. The film works only up to a degree and abandons its instincts. It clamps up a mastermind within the NIA and conveniently cleans up the mess. Moreover, the stakes rise only to swiftly de-escalate, coupled with a promising proposition wrapping the film.
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