Watching the dramatic events in Venezuela over the past week, with its U.S. invasion to carry off a leader, a powerful reaction abides: “This feels like kind of an insane movie.”
It turns out to be more than a feeling. The events were the stuff of an insane movie. And that movie was a documentary. Completed and screened in 2024.
Men of War, from the veteran doc filmmakers Jen Gatien (Limelight) and Billy Corben (Cocaine Cowboys), traces a 2020 attempt by a former Army Green Beret named Jordan Goudreau to launch an ill-fated coup against the government of Nicolas Maduro.
With just 60 poorly trained men, Goudreau’s effort was quickly and brutally quashed, with eight of his people killed and dozens of others taken into custody. But the movie offers an unusual window into what as of last week became official U.S. policy — suggesting not only how the Trump administration’s invasion didn’t just come out of nowhere but providing a glimpse, long before it happened, of what a more successful one might actually look like.
“What I think is very clear is that none of this happened in a vacuum — this is just the latest chapter of a long history of U.S.-Latin American interventions,” Gatien told The Hollywood Reporter this week, adding, “the whole thing, it’s surreal.” The number of moments in the film that feel eerily prescient include supercuts of President Donald Trump and his advisers way back in his first term saying “all options are on the table” with Venezuela along with rhetoric even back then about a desire to take control of the country’s oil supply.
Also pointed: Trump’s head-of-state-esque welcoming of then-opposition leader Juan Guaido at the 2020 State of the Union as the legitimate leader of Venezuela — a move that, when Guaido turned out to be rejected by his people, may well have contributed to the president’s shift from simply supporting grassroots opposition campaigns to intervening militarily himself.
Men of War premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2024 and was soon picked up by Neon. The company gave it a qualifying release a few months ago (it is now on streaming platforms) but the doc did not make the Oscar short list. Had the timing been different, it well might have.
The movie primarily focuses on the failed effort of Goudreau, who tried numerous ways to get a revolution going (and, possibly, collect a $15 million U.S. government bounty), eventually kamikazily self-funding a gambit known as “Operation Gideon” (“Bay of Piglets,” to wags) when other partners dropped out. Goudreau does have the help of a longtime Venezuelan general, Cliver Alcala, who was a loyalist to Hugo Chavez but fell out with Chavez successor Maduro back in 2013 and has long been training soldiers in exile for a planned coup.
The extent of the actual U.S. involvement in Goudreau’s effort is unclear. While the Trump administration denied involvement in what the solider-turned-security consultant was doing, the movie reveals at least one member of then-VP Mike Pence’s office, Drew Horn, meeting with him about it. Goudreau also claims he had close contact with Keith Schiller, Trump’s bodyguard at the time.
But in a way the administration’s technical involvement is less relevant than the film’s spiritual truth: attempts to overthrow Maduro have been going for a long time, and the events of last weekend are just an example of what they look like when they finally come with maximum money and firepower. “A military option,” Gatien says, “has been on the table since at least 2017.”
Gatien calls her film “an adventure story about self-mythologizing,” a comment about Goudreau that easily could apply to the president as well.
To complete the art-life give-and-take, the arrest of Maduro could now in turn have an impact on the subjects of the film. Alcala is six years into a two-decade prison sentence in the U.S. for what Gatien says are unfair and trumped-up charges. The general is portrayed as a hero in the film, someone who genuinely has been fighting Maduro but posed a threat to U.S. authorities as a beloved opposition leader who couldn’t be controlled, and thus was railroaded as a result.
“What Cliver ultimately got charged with was in 2006 while serving as a major general was that he gave two grenades and guns in exchange for releasing [Venezuelan] people who were kidnapped to [then-Colombian terrorist group] FARC. And for acting on behalf of his own country, nothing to do with us, we decided to sentence him,” Gatien said. But the trial against Maduro could now require his testimony, Gatien believes, potentially allowing for him to make a deal with U.S. authorities to reduce his sentence. “I really hope that’s what happens,” she says.
Gatien talked to Alcala a few days after the invasion, and he said he was “giddy” about what had occurred, believing that Maduro was never leaving without force. (Alcala was less enthralled, Gatien said, about Trump’s decision to leave in place Delcy Rodriguez and her apparently repressive ways; a crackdown in the past few days may validate his concern.)
The film could also redouble the efforts of federal prosecutors to go after a man who recently became an American fugitive.
Faced with the prospect of years in jail on weapons-smuggling charges, Goudreau several months ago fled, cutting off his ankle bracelet and disappearing before he could show up for a court date — which throws into question the prosecution against him, not to mention the apartment that Gatien had put up as bond to allow him to stay out of jail while he awaited trial. A new court date next week along with others beyond could help resolve some of those questions.
On one hand, prosecutors could believe that the temperature on Venezuela has been lowered with the removal of Maduro and as a result relax their efforts.
On the other hand, Goudreau’s meddling in a situation that now required heavy U.S. intervention — and the general restoration of Venezuela to the headlines — could make them dig in even further. For now, Goudreau is MIA, adding yet another twist both to the Maduro saga and the ongoing story of the film.
As for the future of Venezuela, Gatien says she feels that Trump’s decision to leave Maduro vice president Delcy Rodriguez and other members of his regime in place instead of installing galvanized opposition leader Maria Corina Machado means that the days of repression, uprisings and even outside manipulations may be far from over. “There are other chapters yet to be written,” says Gatien. “The book on U.S. interventions in Latin America is one that never seems to end.”
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