Review by Jason Gorber

Someone was always going to make a movie about Jordan Goudreau. With his sculpted body, piercing eyes, deadly skills, and years as a Green Beret soldier battling enemies in foreign lands, he’s the kind of iconic character that John Wayne, Chuck Norris, and Sylvester Stallone helped define in the popular imagination. Even when talking about his own exploits, Goudreau speaks in the iconography of the media he has consumed, discussing taking down FBI agents like in the Jason Bourne films, plausibly denying orders like in Mission: Impossible, a fraternity of compatriots like in Band of Brothers, and so forth. His whole life feels like it was planned in central casting, and it’s almost too cinematic to be believable. There’s something deeper, even more mythological at play, this notion of a weapon made inert once the mission wraps, rusting through misuse, wasting away like Apocalypse Now’s Willard feeling as useless as a spent cartridge shell.

Men of War touches upon these larger themes – the obsession with the iconography of popular entertainment, the ramifications of years of combat, the impotence felt when the mission finally wraps – by focusing on Goudreau’s titanically misguided second act. This ex-soldier didn’t simply find ways of running the lives of himself and some of his closest compatriots, he did so in a way that’s as farcical as it is tragic.

What Is ‘Men of War’ About?
This is the story of a man who thought himself powerful and was actually weak, who believed himself the keeper of knowledge only to be played by those far more competent, knowing rules to a game he didn’t even know he was playing. This is a soldier that watched Apocalypse Now and didn’t understand a goddamn thing about what it was warning him about what happens when you lose your soul heading upriver. Jen Gatien and Billy Corben have crafted an exhilarating portrait of the man and his mission, detailing with cinematic verve the attempt to overthrow the Venezuelan government. Spurred on by half-baked promises of those close to the Trump administration, Goudreau helped mount an incursion from neighboring Colombia to try and light a fuse in the Venezuelan resistance, with the end result hoping to topple the Maduro regime and bring a far more agreeable politics to this resource-rich nation that’s been run by a series of autocratic leaders for decades.

On paper, it looked like it should all come together. Goudreau, born in Canada, entered the Canadian military, but after 9/11 went across the border and changed his citizenship, in order to more fitfully fight what was then called the war on terror. He fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, re-upping over and over, finding the calm of normalcy suffocating. When finally dismissed, he formed a security company, provided protection for Trump at some rallies, and eventually was swayed to consider helping in some geopolitical subterfuge. As Goudreau tells his story, this was an honorable mission that was betrayed by those in power who left him alone to falter. For others that are interviewed and crosscut brilliantly in Gatien and Corben’s film, Goudreau is a gormless, hubristic, foolish menace who believed his own hype to the detriment of the men who followed his lead.

During the telling of this story, we meet Samurai-obsessed global players and justifiably rage-filled family members of those caught up in the madness. We hear from one brave local journalist who helps untangle the web, and a General jailed under the auspices of a drug bust, and see how even in public messaging, the likes of Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and John Bolton were at best coddling such misbehaviors by these mercenaries, while in Goudreau’s telling they have their hands bloodied by what eventually transpired.

‘Men of War’ Is an Astonishing Documentary
Image via TIFF

As a documentary, the film does an astonishing job of dancing back and forth between both Goudreau’s testimony and the reactions of others. It’s a real-time fact check that refuses to take sides per se, but allows the audience to revel in the complexity of the situation and the way each participant speaks to the benefit of themselves. At times the stories are so contradictory they can be dizzying, but the underlying truths about just how much of a debacle the entire mission proved to be are both darkly humorous and positively chilling given the real-life effects of such rampant idiocy.

Goudreau recorded many of his main conversations during the build-up to what would be dubbed Operation Gideon, and this mix of contemporaneous footage with post-event interviews elevates the visual and narrative elements of the film all the more. Even when made explicit, there are moments that remain baffling, from a literal contract that spells out the overthrow of a government in exchange for the payment of many millions of dollars, to text messages with those who at least on LinkedIn claim to be right in the room with the highest echelons of political power.

The machinations of what’s taking place between the U.S. and Venezuela continue long after Goudreau’s misadventures, of course. I watched this film mere hours after the still-current president had his plane confiscated by American authorities just as the Venezuelan government has issued an arrest warrant to try and suppress the newest opposition leader to speak out against the Maduro regime. Like with Goudreau’s own story, it would all be so bleakly humorous if it wasn’t tragically true, the lives of tens of millions both in South America and around the world were affected by this corruption, malice, and mendacity.

‘Men of War’ Is Like FX’s ‘Archer’ in Real-Life
Taking Goudreau’s lead, it’s easy to see his story through a fictional lens. If anything, his tale reminded most of Archer Vice, the fifth season of that brilliant animated series where a group of hapless agents fail time after time at their missions, wreaking havoc along the way as somehow things as ridiculous as a broken boat engine can save them from cataclysmic harm. Satire suits this story, but the tales told in Men of War are of course deadly serious, and the deeper ramifications, from talk of the ravages of PTSD for the last generation of volunteer fighters, through to the American tendency to support half-ass invasions (headlines dubbing the failed attempt as a “Bay of Piglets” event are particularly cutting), remain at the forefront in this film.

And so, Goudreau finally got the film he deserved, if perhaps not the ending he wanted. He’s found to be a fascinating, flawed character to follow, as he intersects with an entire world of nefarious dealings, backstabbers, mercenaries, and more, a deadly dark web that ties governments and greed together in chillingly banal ways. Richly sardonic and brilliantly constructed, Men of War is a documentary as thrilling as any action movie, and as bleak and profound as any tragedy. Timely, provocative, and truly exceptional, this is a wonderful work of non-fiction not to be missed.

Men of War had its World Premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.