You are forgiven if you barely remember this happening.

The first week of May 2020 was a little nuts. In the United States, deaths from COVID-19 were breaking new records, approximating the particularly gruesome “a 9/11 a day” metric. And if you were in the United States, there’s a good chance that you were hitting refresh on Amazon, trying to get some N95 masks, or tallying cans of garbanzo beans in your pantry. So, when a small band of misguided men attempted to overthrow the Venezuelan government—Operation Gideon, as it was called—it was quickly waved off by many as some screwy, off-the-front-page story. “The Bay of Piglets” was the gag headline, which, at least for me, inspired an “oh, yeah, this rings a bell” response when I sat down to watch Men of War.

You are forgiven if you barely remember this happening.

The first week of May 2020 was a little nuts. In the United States, deaths from COVID-19 were breaking new records, approximating the particularly gruesome “a 9/11 a day” metric. And if you were in the United States, there’s a good chance that you were hitting refresh on Amazon, trying to get some N95 masks, or tallying cans of garbanzo beans in your pantry. So, when a small band of misguided men attempted to overthrow the Venezuelan government—Operation Gideon, as it was called—it was quickly waved off by many as some screwy, off-the-front-page story. “The Bay of Piglets” was the gag headline, which, at least for me, inspired an “oh, yeah, this rings a bell” response when I sat down to watch Men of War.

Men of War, a 2024 documentary now streaming on most major platforms, gives this curious history footnote the spotlight that it deserves. Yes, the word “screwy” still applies, and parts of the tale seem like something from a Coen brothers movie, but directors Jen Gatien and Billy Corben approach the material as if it were a beehive, their cameras acting as a well-placed stick. The project got an assist from executive producer Adam McKay, the Saturday Night Live alum who created comedy masterpieces like Anchorman (2004) and Step Brothers (2008), as well as more political films like The Big Short (2015), Vice (2018), and Don’t Look Up (2021).

The primary figure behind Operation Gideon, and the perhaps not-entirely-reliable narrator of Men of War, is Jordan Goudreau, a Canadian kid who loves Rambo movies and joined the U.S. Army because, as he somewhat........

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