‘Facing El Chapo’ (2026) Netflix Movie Review - A True-Crime Thriller Without the Thrills

With two little girls and a third baby on the way, Arturo (Alfonso Herrera) and his wife, Isaura (Paola Fernandez), find themselves under severe financial stress. There are loans to be paid off and bills that need to be settled. Arturo makes it clear that abortion is not an option. He wants Isaura to have the baby, even if it means they have to take part-time jobs or work extra shifts to make ends meet. Well, that's exactly what Arturo, a cop, ends up doing in Chava Cartas' action thriller: he takes the night shift with his new partner, Rosales (Noé Hernández). The duo spends their nights bickering, drinking coffee, and eventually returning home in the morning, exhausted. Of course, they quickly become good friends, which is the first bad sign in Facing El Chapo (or La Captura), as it eliminates any possibility of tense conflict or the threat of backstabbing or double-crossing later, when Arturo and Rosales capture two of the country's most wanted criminals.

One of them is the titular Chapo, played by Hector Kotsifakis, who tries to manipulate the two cops with the promise of money and the threat of death. Arturo and Rosales, though, remain determined not to surrender to Chapo's lucrative offers, which makes you question the credibility of this based-on-a-true-story feature. Is the film afraid of ruffling the feathers of the real-life heroes and their police department? Rosales, for a second, gestures to Arturo that ten million dollars could really improve their lives, but Arturo shoots down the suggestion, and Rosales never again considers Chapo's proposition. Cartas portrays the two police officers as squeaky clean, and even though Chapo says he has cops working for him in the police department, we never see a snitch or hear any names. Cartas is so mindful of and respectful toward his subjects that he barely exercises any creative license.

It's entirely possible that the real Arturo and Rosales did their jobs as obediently as possible, but when Cartas brings these figures to the screen, he renders them personality-free and blank. Arturo is merely defined by his thinly drawn financial problems, while Rosales apparently indulges in occasional sex. If they have any wider interests, tastes, or opinions, Cartas isn't interested in exploring them. The director is also inept at staging adrenaline-pumping action sequences. The car chases and violent confrontations are plain, lackluster, and utterly unremarkable. For a movie about two cops who have to keep a ruthless cartel boss in custody until the entire force arrives, Facing El Chapo is incredibly devoid of suspense, urgency, and tension. It doesn't hold you tightly in its grip; it doesn't leave you breathless. What it does instead is build a shrine to the real-life figures. It prays to them with such devotion that it forgets to be a good thriller. In Facing El Chapo, the viewer is forced to face something deeply disappointing: a drab and insignificant film that mistakes reverence for drama.