Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
Director
Alberto Arvelo
Cast
Edgar Ramírez,
María Valverde,
Iwan Rheon,
Danny Huston,
Imanol Arias,
Gary Lewis
Genre
Drama,
History
Simón Bolívar was instrumental in Latin America’s struggle for independence from the Spanish Empire, fighting over 100 battles to become one of the most influential politicians and emancipators in American history. He rode over 70,000 miles on horseback. His military campaigns covered twice the territory of Alexander the Great. His army never conquered—it liberated.
San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle
North American viewers will have one advantage over their South American brethren — the capacity to be surprised. We knew how “Lincoln” was going to end, but The Liberator is a question mark all the way to the finish.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service by Roger Moore
The Liberator may be a Cliff Notes version of South American history, but Ramirez breathes life into it and makes us care.
Los Angeles Times
The admittedly simple premise — that El Libertador fought the good fight, for a worthy cause — is refreshingly escapist. By only briefly addressing the complications of Bolívar's later life as a ruler, it lets us revel in the antiquated notion, if only for a couple of hours, that there are some battles worth fighting.
Los Angeles Times by Lorraine Ali
The admittedly simple premise — that El Libertador fought the good fight, for a worthy cause — is refreshingly escapist. By only briefly addressing the complications of Bolívar's later life as a ruler, it lets us revel in the antiquated notion, if only for a couple of hours, that there are some battles worth fighting.
RogerEbert.com by Glenn Kenny
A handsomely mounted, never-less-than conspicuously intelligent but ultimately too-conventional historical drama, The Liberator shoehorns the epic life of early 19th-century South American revolutionary Simón Bolivar into two hours of intermittently powerful cinema.
Austin Chronicle
The film is vast and epic, featuring sprawling rivers, awe-inspiring landscapes, serious military campaigns, and the rich political and ideological history of the period. Still, without sufficient context, the films swirls grandly but without making much meaning.
Arizona Republic by Barbara VanDenburgh
How disappointing that a movie about challenging authority should be such a slave to convention.
The A.V. Club by Mike D'Angelo
It’s an equally fiery, magnetic star turn, but being trapped in a stolid, unimaginative, and simplistic example of the genre — a typical historical biopic, in other words — saps a surprising amount of its strength.
Austin Chronicle by Louis Black
The film is vast and epic, featuring sprawling rivers, awe-inspiring landscapes, serious military campaigns, and the rich political and ideological history of the period. Still, without sufficient context, the films swirls grandly but without making much meaning.
New York Daily News
Even Ramírez cannot liberate this movie from a clichéd script.
The Dissolve by Vadim Rizov
At best, The Liberator is a commendably old-fashioned affair that goes light on CGI backgrounds and heavy on dazzling scenery. At worst, it’s a reminder of all the extras-heavy would-be epics that got tossed on film history’s slag heap.
Village Voice by Inkoo Kang
Bolivar is eye-rollingly romanticized as a wonderful lover and an even better fighter in Alberto Arvelo's lushly produced, dully reverential The Liberator.
New York Daily News by Jordan Hoffman
Even Ramírez cannot liberate this movie from a clichéd script.
Slant Magazine
It's sense of complexity is giving us masses of people moved by Simon Bolívar's words, and gorgeous sweeping vistas of the landscape backed by a stirring orchestra.
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