Once Upon a Time in the Caribbean (2023)
★★★ — Once Upon a Time in the Caribbean (2023)
Puerto Rico has a cinema history that tends to get overshadowed by its neighbours, but a growing number of local productions have been pushing that reputation in new directions over the past decade or so. Once Upon a Time in the Caribbean (2023), directed by Ray Figueroa and produced through a joint venture between Ocean Park Entertainment, Belle Films and Re:skrituras, arrives as a genuine statement of intent from that scene: a genre film with serious ambitions, running to a substantial 140 minutes, and blending western and action conventions with something rooted far more specifically in Puerto Rican rural life and history. The film was produced across Puerto Rico and Spain, which gives it an interesting dual footing, though its heart is planted firmly in the Caribbean landscape. It sits comfortably alongside other action-inflected dramas from this part of the decade, and if you have been following recent international releases on the blog, you may recall similar territory being covered in the review of All That's Left of You and the short but striking Moshari, both from this same stretch of the 2020s.
Figueroa builds the film around Juan Encarnación, a reserved jíbaro (the term carries strong cultural weight in Puerto Rico, broadly meaning a rural highland peasant, though it comes loaded with ideas of pride, resilience and a certain stoic dignity) whose violent past catches up with him when the woman he loves disappears. What follows is a revenge narrative carried largely by machete rather than pistol, which gives the whole thing a distinctly different texture from the Hollywood westerns it is clearly in conversation with. The production leans into wide, sun-heavy landscapes and a deliberate, unhurried pace that will remind some viewers of the kind of action cinema reviewed here before in pieces like Mad Max: Fury Road, though Figueroa's register is considerably quieter and more studied. The influence of Japanese samurai cinema is not exactly hidden, and the film seems entirely comfortable wearing it.
The principal cast is led by Essined Aponte and Héctor Aníbal, with supporting turns from Modesto Lacen, Sophia Aguayo and Linda Aguayo. Aníbal in particular has a screen presence that suits the material well: weathered, economical with expression, the kind of performance that does its work in silences as much as in dialogue. The cast is largely drawn from Puerto Rican theatre and television, which lends the whole thing an authenticity that a more internationally assembled production might have struggled to replicate. There is a lived-in quality to these performances, a familiarity with the landscape and the idiom, that polished but unremarkable genre fare tends to miss entirely.
A-Z World Movie Tour Puerto Rico From the very first frame, Once Upon a Time in the Caribbean grabs you with its bold visual style, sun-bleached colours, wide shots of rugged fields and forests, and a striking use of composition that feels unmistakably inspired by Kurosawa. Set in rural Puerto Rico, this is a gritty, slow-burn western drama with the soul of a samurai film. The story follows a former sugarcane worker drawn back into violence when a local land baron kidnaps his wife, and the early scenes are electric: tense, atmospheric, and elevated by a haunting soundtrack that pulses like a heartbeat. The cinematography is gorgeous, golden fields, shadowy forests, machetes catching the light like katanas, and the film wears its influences with pride, from the stoic protagonist to the moral weight of vengeance. There’s real craft here, a sense that the director isn’t just making a genre film, but reimagining it through a Caribbean lens, rooted in place, language, and rhythm. I love the fact that characters are introduced by the names of their customised Machetes. But for all its promise, the momentum stumbles in the second half. The middle drags, repeating themes without deepening them, and the final act veers into predictability, the showdown we saw coming from mile off, the redemption arc that doesn’t quite land. It’s clear the film is trying to say something about justice, legacy, and the cost of violence, but it takes too long to get there. Still, it’s a powerful, visually stunning achievement for Puerto Rican cinema, ambitious, authentic, and beautifully made. Just a bit too long, and a little too familiar by the end.
What stays with me most is that sense of a film genuinely trying to do something new with well-worn material, using a specific place and culture as the lens rather than the backdrop. The machete as a symbol, the jíbaro as a western archetype, the Caribbean light doing the work that Monument Valley does in Ford films: for me, those choices are what make it worth your time, even when the story loses its footing. It is the kind of film I find myself recommending with a caveat or two rather than an outright cheer, which is a more honest position than most blockbusters put me in. Not everything that is ambitious comes off, but ambition itself is not nothing.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2023 | Watched: 2025-08-23
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
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More from the 2020s: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · The Long Walk (2025) · Americana (2023)
More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)
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