It’s September 1960, and the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro (Diego Boneta), arrives in New York City to give a speech at the United Nations assembly.
His figure and the contents of said speech, particularly the possibility of Castro aligning with communism and the Soviet Union, immediately becomes of great importance to several interested parties, including, but not limited to, the FBI, CIA, and even the Mafia.
Elsewhere, Malcolm X (Kendrick Sampson) invites Castro to relocate to the iconic, yet struggling, Hotel Theresa in Harlem, as a way of solidarity with the civil rights movement. As Castro moves in, several hotel employees, including young Loenel (Xolo Maridueña), become crucial participants in the plot that has too many players and too many opposing goals not to turn into a disaster.
A new feature film by Eif Rivera, aptly titled Killing Castro, draws inspiration for its tight, fast-paced story from the events of real life, which once again proves to be the most astonishing storyteller ever, coming up with plot points and details that no professional screenwriter ever could. The story, of course, still gets dramatized to serve intended narrative purposes, but the sense of a certain authenticity, engraved in something that at times plays out like Joe Carnahan’s Smokin’ Aces, carries the film through to the desired effect.
In terms of the stakes and suspense, Rivera’s film faces a significant challenge, since even cursory knowledge of history immediately gives away the biggest spoiler: Fidel Castro didn’t die in New York in 1960, having lived a long life and passing at the age of 90 in Cuba, which he continued to rule for many years. So, rather than trying to create intrigue around the potential success of the assassination plot, the script, written by Thomas DeGrezia and Leon Hendrix, roots the suspense in something else: an unshakable sense of dread of finding yourself on a precipice of some truly tumultuous times.
The fates of random people, who get caught up in a web they don’t fully understand but can actually be crucial to, become the true driving force of the action, rather than Al Pacino’s retired CIA operative, who enthusiastically orchestrates the assassination attempt. Killing Castro mostly works with tried-and-true, but still effective aesthetic tools: some cross-cutting, some ominous lighting, some creative use of the hotel space the action is mostly confined to. The film doesn’t make a secret that you’ve seen something like this before. In fact, the presence of Pacino, who spends most of his screen time voicing the reminder that he’s done it all before and been doing it for a long time, serves as a meta-reminder of the very same thing for the audience as well.
By the end, Killing Castro does lose its breath a bit, starting to stumble during the story’s resolution. And to be completely honest, it is more of an entertaining affair than a truly thought-provoking one throughout its whole runtime. Still, the movie holds its own, with all the parallels between its story and the current turbulent state of the world, and with the wisely chosen point of view of Maridueña’s character, a bystander on the collision course of history.
At the same time, Diego Boneta stands out as Castro, as he plays not so much a person, but something grander -- a symbol. Fueled by raw, genuine charisma, Boneta’s Castro, a man who at a certain point effortlessly talks his way out of a situation involving several guns, becomes a larger-than-life personification of historical turbulence itself –- of something so complex and multi-layered it can very well remain incomprehensible.
The film enjoyed its world premiere at the 2026 Tribeca Festival. Visit its page at the festival site for more information.