“Take No Prisoners” couldn’t have been an easy film to make, tracking the negotiation of a prisoner swap between the U.S. and Venezuela that not only had no specific timetable for a resolution, but had to take into account that the government and the relatives of the prisoners of the state don’t always have the same priorities. Although the seemingly unfettered access to Roger Carstens, a now-former Deputy Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs under President Biden and the first Trump administration, would be a coup in and of itself as he goes about the work of bringing people back to the U.S. that have been detained abroad, the real value of Adam Ciralsky and Subrata De’s brisk nonfiction thriller is offering the perspective of the family of Eyvin Hernandez, a Los Angeles County Defender on vacation in South America who ended up staying for 21 months against his will.
When the film itself was likely set into motion by the public interest in the releases of Brittney Griner and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, “Take No Prisoners” is stronger for making those cases footnotes as they follow a lower-profile case in real time, with just one fascinating element of many being that simply because of the way Hernandez was classified (not yet considered “unlawfully detained”), he was left out of talks about a prisoner exchange between U.S. and Venezuela that commenced seven months after he was taken in March 2022 and netted President Nicolas Maduro’s wife’s relatives known as the “Narco Nephews.” Although Carstens comes across as a well-respected, hard-nosed negotiator putting out fires left and right around the world, he is can alternately be viewed as a prisoner himself of procedure and circumstance when the process of even starting talks is a complicated bit of diplomacy apart from emotions involved and handling numerous cases allows him little time to provide his direct attention to any one family.
By setting up a separate set of cameras in Los Angeles, Ciralsky and De are able to show the disconnect that ends up occurring when the Hernandez family, comprised of Eyvin’s brother Henry, his father Pedro and mother Ana, desperately seek out reports back from Carstens, who can’t be working on the case full-time despite his team’s best efforts, and are compelled to lobby for attention in any corner they can get it, putting out flyers on the streets around them and holding protests to make it onto the local news, to put pressure on the Hostage Affairs office to get their loved one back. It’s a wrenching situation apart from whatever treatment Eyvin may be enduring in unjust confinement, and as the directors and editor Scott Sheppard skillfully weave in, one that is hardly uncommon when the onus has mostly been placed on families of the abducted to make enough noise to not be ignored, dating back to when the journalist James Foley was kidnapped in Syria in 2012 and his wife Diane forced a change in hostage policy with her testimony on Capitol Hill.
“Take No Prisoners” is impressively even-handed with regard to the various parties involved and strikes a strong balance as well in terms of offering a healthy historical context and what cameras can capture in the moment, leading to such remarkable scenes as when Henry attends a gala in Carstens’ honor in Washington D.C. celebrating the work he’s done, yet can’t help but shake the feeling that it doesn’t feel like he’s doing his job at all when his brother is still locked away. Yet that moment is entirely understandable from Carstens’ perspective as well when even accepting the award is part of a dog-and-pony show to grease the wheels necessary to facilitate Eyvin’s release when like Henry, he’s just trying to bring some attention to a terrible situation. Ciralsky and De can be forgiven for adding an exciting patina to what’s really a waiting game, adopting a globe-trotting house style akin to “Traffic” that can occasionally feel overpumped for dramatic effect, but any aesthetically feigned urgency is ultimately supplanted by the real thing as the filmmakers meticulously illustrate how many gears need to turn for a prisoner swap to happen and the delicacy required for it to happen is fraught enough. The system itself may move slowly, but “Take No Prisoners” hits like a freight train.
“Take No Prisoners” will screen again at SXSW on March 9th at 6 pm at the AFS Cinema and March 13th at 5:45 pm at the Alamo Lamar 5 and 6.