That's right.

The Miami Herald critic is often infuriating. Perhaps I shouldn't care since the internet has given everyone easy access to reviews from everywhere. But one wishes the hometown daily would have a decent film critic, especially since the other arts critics are very good. My issue with Rene Rodriguez is not that he gave El Benny two stars (2 1/2 means "worth seeing" which is the grade I would give it) or that he doesn't attend festival press screenings (dvds are mailed to him). It's just that his low opinion of the Cuban film seems colored by strict political ideology. In one paragraph he complains that El Benny "follows a woefully similar blueprint to Walk the Line and Ray", which it does but those are the conventions of the genre and those two are enjoyable films. But then he writes: "What's worse, El Benny sports an entirely superfluous pro-Revolution subtext..." I wish I had attended the public screenings to confirm my suspicion that his is an extreme position and that audiences didn't find anything in the film overtly political.

Here's my review:El Benny