Critics reviews

There are times in which “Wasp Network” feels like a John le Carré tale drenched in Miami sun, or even a serious-minded “Top Gun” variant. But it’s also a provocative demonstration of how strange life can get when the political and the personal intertwine like roots of a mammoth tree.

Both too much and not enough, writer-director Olivier Assayas’s Wasp Network takes a surprisingly little-known chapter in the post-Cold War espionage game and starts to blow it up into an epic-sized story before losing the thread.

This is a true story that’s chiefly interesting because it’s about double agents and Cuban espionage. It’s only when Wasp Network actually turns to matters of cloak-and-dagger intrigue that it begins to fall apart.

Assayas’ abiding gifts as a stylist, dramatist, and mood-maker are only intermittently felt in Wasp Network, a work of structural coherence that is nonetheless drained of tension and urgency.

The occasion to reconstruct the thrilling and trashy aesthetic of ’90s Florida is missed, with costumes and props feeling more like expensive, hip vintage pieces than tools for historical mimesis. It’s too bad for the stellar cast, who are sacrificed for the film’s admirable but undeveloped entry points: entertain telling a lesser-known story and draw parallels with todays’ global migration debates.