All six episodes of The Fight for Justice Paolo Guerrero were released in the usual Netflix fashion on October 5, 2022, delving into the real-life events of the eponymous former Peruvian football captain in 2018. His story isn’t merely a singular account relegated to his private life, rather, it gravely concerned his family and even more so, an entire nation that had been awaiting its chance in the World Cup for 36 years.
Starring Nikko Ponce, Irene Eyzaguirre, Rodrigo Palacios, Emilram Cossío, Tatiana Espinoza, and more, the series bears the true testimonials of Guerrero himself, his family, and more, with a few fictionalized elements sprinkled at the top. It was directed by Javier Fuentes-León and Daniel Vega Vidal.
Netflix describes the series as:
Peruvian football player Paolo Guerrero wages a difficult legal battle after testing positive for cocaine months before the World Cup.
-The Fight for Justice: Paolo Guerrero Does Not Contain Spoilers-
The sports biography starts off with a clear declaration that the player “faces the biggest challenge of his career” after testing positive for cocaine in his anti-doping test prior to the playoffs. In 2018, he was 34 years old, and age as we know is but a ticking bomb in athletic years. Guerrero had to deal with the same issues and tackle signing his new contracts in such a dire situation.
On top of that, surmounting the pressure arising from the public wasn’t an easy task either. He was surrounded on all sides with questions of defending his own as well as his family’s honor and protecting a nation’s dream. Despite having renewed all of their hopes by scoring the tying and qualifying goal, he was deserted by the national federation for the sake of protecting their own skins.
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This series is a realistic representation of what sportspersons are subjected to in the cut-throat environment of the business. It’s no longer just about the game when you’re playing in the big leagues. The national audience may see it that way, but the people involved behind the scenes know it better than anyone else, just like Guerrero did. Barely anyone came to his aid, and the show covers the same feeling of being closed in by looking at the player’s mental struggle through the journey. Nikko Ponce humanizes Guerrero’s story and brings the same conflict of emotions to the forefront in his impeccable style.
Due to the failed outcome of his initial appeals, Depredador, as Guerrero is famously recognized, has to sit out several matches before the World Cup. It’s during this period that another human element is greatly focused upon. As soon as things go south, one can easily distinguish between one’s contacts and decode who genuinely cares for them. The same happens with him. All the compassion and fire that brought his nation together, falls down to name-calling and berating the man responsible for it.
Every time he’s depicted as feeling suffocated by the gazes of the people around him, we can feel the same numbness across the screen. There’s absolutely no need for theatrics to foreground the narrative’s profundity, all of it is done through the purity and personal drive of human emotion. Abrupt cuts often mess up the linearity but it again plays along with the prime character’s personal mental state. Till the very end, the storytelling also highlights the intimate nature of faith and how it plays a huge role in holding a community together, something that can never be achieved by organized religion.
The Fight for Justice Paolo Guerrero: Worth the Watch?
Paolo Guerrero’s tale of bad luck is something that not only brought the Peruvian people together but also what brought the rival countries as a united front. Audiences watching his story feel the same angst regardless of where they come from, and that’s the most positive takeaway of this series.
We get to witness a moving feat of compassion and sportsmanship by the end of the arc but simultaneously a ruthless system at play, judging sportspersons, is also exposed. Anything related to a sports storyline is either meant to be a major hit or a flop. It’s safe to put it out there that this particular series has borne a worthy reflection of a real-life story and the people in it.
The Fight for Justice Paolo Guerrero is now streaming on Netflix.
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