TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024 REVIEW! Men of War is the rarest of gems — a perfect documentary — the kind that comes around maybe once a decade. This is a story so profound, hilarious, tragic, and idiotic that it could only be a documentary. It is too unbelievable to be a narrative film. Still, even with a great story, often there is not enough source material to make a compelling doc. Well, thank the film gods because directors Billy Corben and Jen Gatien have delivered us unto salvation. They’ve got a compelling lead telling a popcorn-worthy tale of intrigue and incompetence and plenty of footage to back it up.
This is the true story of Jordan Goudreau, a former U.S. Army Green Beret, who led Operation Gideon, a failed 2020 attempt to overthrow the Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro with two boats and a few dozen soldiers. Maduro is the dictator of Venezuela, who has declared himself the victor of elections, which most consider to be fraudulent. In 2018, most observers say that opposition candidate Juan Guaidó won the presidential election. However, he was forced to flee in exile, with many countries accepting him as the legitimate victor.
Goudreau, after retiring from several tours of duty as a Green Beret, just found that he loved war too much not to be killing people every day. So, he started a private security firm called Silvercorp U.S.A. Silvercorp developed ties to Keith Schiller, Donald Trump’s longtime head of security. Schiller introduced Goudreau to people interested in overthrowing the Venezuelan regime. Eventually, he teamed up with Clíver Alcalá Cordones, a former Venezuelan general who was training a camp of soldiers in Colombia to overthrow Maduro. Goudreau then used his political connections to get a contract for $1.5 million to overthrow the government from Juan Guaidó and his associates, the purported legitimate president-elect. However, Guido and friends become wary of Goudreau, Alcala, or both and backed out of the deal. Goudreau went ahead anyway and recruited two of his special forces colleagues to aid in the hapless operation of delusional men.
“…Jordan Goudreau, a former U.S. Army Green Beret, who led Operation Gideon, a failed 2020 attempt to overthrow the Venezuelan government…”
Men of War details a truly epic level of finger-pointing, mistrust, and recrimination between Goudreau, Alcala, representatives of Guaidó, and members of the Trump administration. Nearly everyone attempts to dodge blame for the failure or even deny that they were involved at all. Aside from the ignominy of being involved in a failure so incompetent it was nicknamed the “Bay of Piglets,'” there is the additional taint of having been taken in by any of the hucksters involved.
Goudreau is every documentarian’s dream: just competent enough to have been involved in high-level international intrigue, prescient (or paranoid) enough to have recorded everything, charming enough to carry a film (he narrates), and delusional enough to confess to astoundingly moronic crimes on camera in jaw-dropping detail. But this isn’t just a clown show; it’s a clown show that lets us glimpse, however briefly, into the abyss in the way that only a court jester can. Men of War exposes deep corruption, manipulation, and cover-ups at the highest level of international politics, but with a hefty dose of palm-in-face delusion and incompetence.
The film moves along at a rapid clip, with the audience constantly on the edge of their seat, waiting to see what comes next, who is going to point the finger at whom, or what bombshell of evidence is going to land, negating the previous denial. All through it, Goudreau tells his story, so oddly charming, yet thoroughly delusional, that it boggles the mind. Corben and Gatien and editor Andrew Saunderson deserve enormous credit for layering a complex story. Men of War involves straight-to-camera confessionals, publicly available footage, text messages, secretly recorded meetings, and minor recreations into one of the most compelling docs in years. Humanity is only a farce masquerading as tragedy, or is it the other way around?
Men of War screened at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.
"…perfect..."
