The first hour of Icíar Bollaín's film, which was written by Ken Loach's perennial screenwriter, Paul Laverty, is a first-rate political drama. A Spanish movie crew led by a liberal director (Gael García Bernal) comes to Bolivia to make a revisionist historical narrative dramatizing Christopher Columbus's inhumane treatment of the Indians he captured and subjugated. The filmmakers, though well-intentioned as far their movie goes, prove colonialist exploiters themselves, paying their native extras paltry wages and being frustrated when the local cast go on strike against the privatizing of water (a re-creation of the real-life Cochabamba protests in 2000). The movie-within-a-movie being filmed about Columbus is as vivid as a Werner Herzog period adventure. Unfortunately, Even the Rain goes awry toward the end, beholden to untenable plot turns in Laverty's script.
