SXSW 2025 Review: TAKE NO PRISONERS, Get Our Son Out of There!

One day, Eyvin Hernandez was vacationing in Ecuador. The next day, he was imprisoned in Venezuela.

Take No Prisoners
The film enjoys its world premiere at SXSW 2025.

Steely gazed with a ready smile, Roger Carstens makes for perfect television.

Appointed in 2020 as the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs in the U.S., military veteran Carstens has appeared on television many, many times. He has been instrumental in negotiating the release of more than a dozen U.S. citizens who were being held hostage by other countries, including professional basketball player Brittney Griner. But that's only half the story.

The other half is Eyvin Hernandez, a public defender from Los Angeles, California, who was vacationing in Ecuador with his girlfriend when he was snatched near the border with Venezuela and taken into custody by armed troops (first) and then imprisoned for hours, days, weeks, and months. Since Eyvin's capture was not receiving the attention it should, either by the government or the media, his family in Los Angeles set out to start a grass-roots publicity campaign to make people aware of his situation.

The campaign worked! It led to Roger Carstens taking on Eyvin's case. In itself, that could be considered a great victory, but it was only the start of what would prove to be a long, drawn-out effort to negotiate Eyvin's release.

Directors Adam Ciralsky and Subrata De were first drawn to the case via Carstens' magnetic presence, and understandably so. The documentary could have been told entirely through his eyes; his bearing is commanding but kind, and no one would have complained if the story was told that way.

Yet Carstens himself reminds that the families of the individuals who are being held, or wrongly detained, are the ones whose story should be told. After all, despite his evident deep sympathy for the victims and their families, the families are the ones who must contend with the loss of their loved ones. They can only hope that they will be reunited some day. As Take No Prisoners plays out, we get to know Eyvin's family -- his father and mother and younger brother, especially -- and see their daily pain, as well as their die-hard efforts to somehow bring Eyvin home.

We've all seen many, many hostage rescue movies, from Hollywood studios to independent production companies around the world. Some are good and many are thrilling. I've never seen a hostage rescue movie like Take No Prisoners, which bristles with authentic tension, coupled with a gnawing fear that this ain't Hollywood; happy endings are not guaranteed.

Briskly paced and absolutely compelling, directors Adam Ciralsky and Subrata De have fashioned a real-life thriller that is grounded in reality and filled with heart-rending emotion.