Heroic (2023)

Heroic is the kind of drama-thriller that doesn’t just tell you what a system does to a young person—it makes you feel its weight, minute by minute, with a visual rigor and formal control that’s as gripping as it is unsettling. David Zonana directs with a stark, unblinking clarity, turning Luis’s arrival at the Heroico Military College into a tense, immersive experience where discipline and “tradition” curdle into something normalized and frightening. Santiago Sandoval gives Luis a quiet, watchful presence that pulls you closer even as the world around him hardens, and the film’s political intelligence lands without speeches or easy answers. It’s not a comfort watch—its power comes from how honestly it confronts institutional violence—but if you want cinema that’s precise, forceful, and impossible to shrug off, this one stays with you.

Heroic is clearly aiming to be a hard, unglamorous look at how a military institution grinds down a young Indigenous recruit, and it commits to that grim, disciplined tone without flinching. The problem is it can feel like you’re watching the same point being made over and over, with a trajectory you can see coming from miles away, which drains the tension a thriller should earn. Luis’s inner life also isn’t explored as deeply as you might hope, so the film’s outrage sometimes lands more as an idea than a fully felt character journey. If you’re drawn to stark social critique and oppressive atmosphere, there’s value here, but if you need sharper writing, richer characterization, or narrative surprises, this may test your patience.