Since beginning his Hollywood career in the mid 1990’s, Michael Peña has proven to be one of the industry’s most reliable character actors, playing second fiddle to better known stars who don’t always possess his natural acting ability. In the rare occasion that Peña is giving a leading role, such as the cop drama End of Watch, Peña has proven he’s an actor capable of handling roles that require equal parts sensitivity and strength are important in his portrayal of activist Cesar Chavez in Diego Luna’s sophomore directorial effort.

Unfortunately, while Peña delivers the solid performance, the screenplay by Keir Pearson and Timothy J. Sexton is strictly paint-by-the-numbers stuff. The film begins in 1965. Chavez and his wife Helen (America Ferrera) pack up their eight kids into a VW bug and head off for California farm country. Chavez, tired of organizing things out of his Las Angeles office, wants to meet the workers and get his hands dirty. As the years pass, he struggles not just with irredeemable growers and a corrupt local police force led by a Sheriff Smith (Michael Cudlitz) but with his own people, whose frustration grows, as the movement seems to take one step forward and three steps back. Chavez and his loyal lieutenant Dolores Huerta (Rosario Dawson) merge their small band of Mexican activists with a group of Filipino workers stuck in a similarly difficult situation.

Given that the film jumps straight into Chavez’s union work, we are given very little in the way of a back story. He’s shown to be a man who could be quite stubborn, but in the end, only wanted what was best for migrant farm workers. According to the film, Chavez’s only flaw is his lack of bonding time with his teenage son Fernando (Eli Vargas), which is only because of his single-minded devotion to the migrant farm workers (in other words, it isn’t that much of a character flaw, under the circumstances). He’s devoted to his wife, a passable father to his kids and has a solid relationship with his brother Richard (Jacob Vargas), who joins Cesar in his work with the migrant farm workers. Again the lack of back story is troubling, because it leaves a lot of anecdotal elements about the sibling relationship unexplained.

The tendency to assume that viewers are going to know that viewers are going to know who the various characters in the film are is unfortunate, It’s likely a symptom of the fact that director Diego Luna, executive producers Gael García Bernal, John Malkovich and others already knew this information and assumed viewers would be able to fill in the blanks. Unfortunately, a lot of younger viewers probably have little or no knowledge of Chavez.

The film does manage to hit an emotional chord in the last third or so of the story, once Senator Robert Kennedy (Jack Holmes) gets involved and Cesar goes on a hunger strike. Unfortunately, the film chooses to gloss over the whole incident—one minute Cesar is close to death, after not eating for three weeks, minutes later, he’s back at work, looking as healthy as ever.

While all of the performances are commendable, Cesar Chavez was apparently a passion project for Diego Luna; that passion simply doesn’t come across on screen. The screenplay has too many holes. Cesar Chavez was an important person in history, and he deserved a more fully developed biopic then this one.

Cesar Chavez is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films in the 2.40:1 aspect ratio in 1080p. I don’t know if this movie was shot on film or digital, but it looks like film to me. Grain is more apparent in the darker scenes, making grain more apparent and adding a slight fuzziness to the look of things. Contrast is occasionally lacking, making for a bit of a murky look. Nonetheless, this actually fits the overall dusty look of much of the film. Colors are accurate looking, though aren’t particularly vivid. There are quite a few archival sequences culled from old news reports and they look like rough VHS quality. As to the overall image quality, there are no signs of significant manipulation.

Cesar Chavez offers a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix that offers nice ambient environmental sounds in the many field based scenes. Surround activity is apparent when appropriate, during occasional gunshots which spark the LFE channel. Dialogue and the ethnically tinged score are both presented very cleanly and clearly.

English SDH and Spanish subtitles are included.

The following extras are available:

  • Making Cesar Chavez (HD, 19:05) An EPK with interviews and scenes from the film.
  • UV Digital Copy