MEN OF WAR (2025) - Mark Reviews Movies

Men of War, Neon

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 8, 2025

There's a distinct possibility that no one in Men of War, a documentary about a failed coup attempt in Venezuela, is being fully honest. There are many, many reasons for many, many lies to be told and facts to be obfuscated. The biggest one, of course, is that anyone involved in this scheme would almost certainly be guilty of several crimes in at least one of two countries.

Directors Billy Corben and Jen Gatien clearly are interested in obtaining as many sides of this story as possible, and they have very good access to some of the key players in the attempted coup. At the center of it is Jordan Goudreau, a former member of the United States Army Special Forces, who served for 15 years, following a brief career in the military of his native Canada, and was deployed on multiple tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

After leaving the military, Goudreau says that he felt as if he didn't have much of a purpose. He needed a mission, ideally one that involved his extensive experience, so he started a private security firm. One would think that might be enough, but when powerful people start offering millions of dollars to overthrow a foreign leader who is internationally perceived as a dictator, it makes a lot of sense why Goudreau would step up to the task, if only because of the practical, financial motive.

Goudreau, who seems to have allowed the filmmakers thorough access to him under circumstances where that would appear to be—to put it generously—an unwise decision, weaves a pretty compelling tale about his life, his character, his lofty ideals, and how he was hung out to dry by an administration that probably would have rewarded him greatly if his plan had succeeded. Initially, the official position of the United States government under President Donald Trump during his first term was that they had no direct participation in Goudreau's coup effort. Later, they changed it, of course, to state that they had no knowledge at all, but Goudreau has the text messages to suggest that someone must have.

This would seem an important thread for the filmmakers to follow, but they don't come across as being especially concerned with opening up an actual investigation into the stories everyone is telling here. Sure, the narrative, in the naïve folly of its ambition and the inconsistent testimonies of its real or alleged participants, is fascinating enough on a certain level. What makes it even more so, though, are the questions that are left behind—ones that Corben and Gatien don't even bother to ask.

It's strange, too, because Goudreau is right there. He was—by all accounts, including his own—the mastermind of this plan, which involved gaining the trust and go-ahead from a couple of important, powerful, and influential leaders of the Venezuelan opposition to President Nicolás Maduro. The other chief planner was Cliver Alcalá, a retired higher-up in the Venezuelan Army, who is also interviewed by the filmmakers—from a prison in New York. For whatever shortcomings the movie may possess in terms of digging deeper into this story and its ringleaders, there's no denying that the filmmakers have a flair for setting up tension and intrigue.

The two men, along with the wealthy Venezuelan exile J.J. Rendón out of Miami, gained the financing, personnel, and plenty of weapons and other hardware to stage what might have been a successful coup. The movie's opening informs us immediately that it all goes wrong, with a couple news outlets dubbing it "the Bay of Piglets," but even that doesn't give away too much. How the plan goes wrong, thanks to a lot of human error and ego, says a lot more than the ultimate outcome of it.

Everyone is fairly quick to blame Goudreau, from the money man, to Alcalá, and to the brother of another retired U.S. soldier—one of two of his old war buddies—whom Goudreau convinced to participate. They have good reason to do so, as well. At one point before the invasion from a home base in neighboring Colombia, the Maduro regime identified the existence of the plan and all of the major players. The local TV news spread Goudreau's photo everywhere, and his only defense of going through with the scheme anyway is that, somehow, he still believed he had the element of surprise. One pertinent question that might have come Goudreau's way is what he believes the definition of that phrase to actually be.

Another would be to ask why Goudreau, hours before the mission went to hell, left Colombia and didn't actually participate in the coup attempt. He repeatedly says he knows nothing except and only feels truly alive during a mission, but if that is genuinely the case, why wasn't he an actual part of it?

The filmmakers mainly want us to sympathize with their primary subject, and in certain ways, we do, since he does seem trapped in a specific mindset and surely is a fall guy for at least one person in the U.S. government at the time (Given the general incompetence of everyone surrounding the then-and-now-president, it's likely more than just one person). Men of War, though, leaves far too much unanswered for that to really matter, and it's mostly because the filmmakers don't think or bother to ask.

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