There is nothing in this Netflix docuseries about the disappearance of the ARA San Juan that you can’t read or watch anywhere else on the internet. The case itself is interesting, brimming with political controversy and engineering lessons to be learned, but the series’ narrative structure and editing are so formulaic and dull that they fail to bring justice to the promising premise. The flow is rocky, the build-up is missing, and the focus is scattered, so much so that a two-hour story, at best, has unnecessarily expanded itself into eight episodes. It’s not that the filmmakers have so much to say, it’s that they don’t know how to say it. If we can learn anything from this docuseries, it’s that any story no matter how big or small will suffer from a lack of direction and vision.
Interviews with experts and relatives fuel this investigative docuseries about the tragic 2017 disappearance of a military submarine that shook the world.
Speaking to military experts, journalists, and other people close to the case, this eight-part documentary tracks the mysterious disappearance of the Argentine submarine ARA San Juan.
To be fair, the filmmakers do well to interview many friends and family of the fallen. It adds an urgent human element that might have been buried in other tellings of the story.
You’re better off reading articles about the case instead of sitting through hours of this scatter-focused series.
