STAR RATING: ***** Brilliant **** Very Good *** Okay ** Poor * Awful
Vanessa Guillen was a young Latin American woman, whose dreams did not conform with traditional gender norms. She wanted to make her name either as a boxer, or in the military, and went with the latter. Making her family extremely proud, Vanessa settled in well at the Fort Hood military compound for a while, but quickly grew disillusioned, and complained of sexual harassment and abuse by her fellow cadets. She was later found murdered in a shallow ditch, spurring her mother Gloria, and sisters Mayra and Lupe into a ferocious battle for justice, and exposing a top down culture of corruption at FH, whilst effecting a change in the law.
If their general original content is somewhat hit and miss, Netflix can generally be relied on to produce a solid, insightful documentary, and this, the feature length directorial debut of director Christy Wegener, would be one such example. A shocking, unbelievable true life tale of institutional corruption and evil, it shines a light on a marginalised voice, in the shape of a young woman from a minority background, and the failings and betrayal of an organisation meant to protect her. Of shattered dreams and shattered hearts, finding the strength to rise up to demand justice and change.
No longer able to fight her own corner, Vanessa's legacy rests in the hands of her mother and two sisters, who are (without generalising) a typically impassioned Latin American family, dealt the most shattering of blows. You can feel the fire raging within them, as they chase their campaign around the company, rallying legal experts, lawmakers and even (then) President Trump in to making Vanessa's life matter. This was a young woman whose only crime was to pursue a dream and make her loved ones proud, and it's truly shocking how the apparently most honourable, and most deserving of respect, people actually behave when forced in to a corner and told to justify their actions, as we've seen in other recent documentaries such as Athlete A. It really makes you feel uncomfortable.
There are some people who sadly end up having more of an impact in death than they do in life, which things like the death of George Floyd (whatever you thought of him) proven, and someone like Vanessa Guillen has the power to do just the same thing, and maybe even better. ****
