Pinochet's Last Stand

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victor o Ever since I was in high school, I had a great love for studying history. In my history classes, we were encouraged to read the newspaper and see the events in the world. This event caught my interest because I was a big Cold War buff, and I was completely supportive of General Augusto Pinochet. I followed this event in history as often as I could and when it ended as it did, I was overjoyed. Others did not hold my opinion and clearly, the makers of this movie do not. But in fairness, they do a good job of depicting the facts that led to the year-long situation with Augusto Pinochet and his detainment in England. In 1998, General Augusto Pinochet was visiting England to seek treatment for an illness. But with its Labour Party government with the support of various liberal and radical Chilean movements and human rights groups took advantage of a treaty to punish Pinochet for his eighteen years of rule with his alleged crimes against humanity. Pinochet in his plight takes advantage of the circumstances, working with the best lawyers at his disposal and his acquaintances with his foreign allies as he does all he can while the Labour government and the various anti-Pinochet groups do all they can to use the human rights charter to extradite him to Spain to await trial for abuses committed to Spanish citizens living in Chile during his rule. This event is history, and it is committed remarkably well but also with some level of prejudice. But I enjoyed it as the actors did their job depicting the participants of history. I enjoyed Derek Jacobi as General Pinochet as he brings forward a gruff, stern strongman out to defend himself to the fullest as well as finding it nice that Peter Capaldi is one of the people out to persecute Pinochet. I hated the character played by Yolanda Vazquez as an anti-Pinochet Chilean activist, but I presume I was supposed to. The movie was short but it had me at my seat recalling the investment I had in the story when I was a teenager. As mentioned, I was a Cold War buff who enjoyed the forces that took on international communism and I was in awe of Pinochet. People view Pinochet as a criminal, but I viewed him as a hero who saved his country from the irresponsible, savage, idiotic communists that were threatening to destroy Chile, just as they had done in Russia, China, Cuba, and many other countries. I am well aware that there are many horrible atrocities committed by Pinochet, the fact that his military overthrew a democratically elected leftist government is not for dispute but both sides were culpable of many crimes and deep down I question the legality of pursuing crimes against humanity as true justice or victor's justice aka revenge. In World War II, America sent the Japanese military officials to hang for crimes against humanity, but America nuked their cities. Should the pilots of Enola Gay and Bocks Car have gone to prison? Of course not. I think Nazi leader Herman Goering on trial at Nuremberg made it clear that his inditement was not justice and there are plenty of historians who agree with that. In this case, plebiscite alone should have been justice, but Pinochet's enemies wanted him to stand trial wanting revenge, a way of saying their way of life was right and that Pinochet was wrong. Revenge is an act of savages and I supported Pinochet for that fact alone. This docudrama did its best to get viewers to support Pinochet's incarceration but not me. I watch the end of the movie with satisfaction. Splendid movie. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Pinochet's Last Stand

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