‘A Time for Bravery’ Review: An Argentine Classic Gets a Mexican Second Life (Netflix)

The project sounds curious, to say the least. While it’s no longer unusual for an Argentine film to be remade in another country—in this case, Mexico—it is far less common for that remake to be directed by another Argentine filmmaker. And not the same director who made the original, but a generational peer. A Time for Bravery is a remake of Tiempo de valientes (On Probation), the 2005 film that launched Damián Szifron’s career, now produced in Mexico with local actors and backed by an Argentine production company (K&S, the same one behind the original). What makes the combination especially odd is that the director is Ariel Winograd, another Argentine filmmaker, for whom this marks his fourth film shot in Mexico, following comedies such as Tod@s caen, ¿Y cómo es él?, and Una pequeña confusión.

The director of Mamá se fue de viaje, The Heist of the Century, and the creator of the series Menem and Coppola: The Agent, Winograd has been quietly building a parallel career in Mexico for some time now. He appears comfortable there, confidently handling the action-inflected comedy format that has become one of the defining traits of his work. A Time for Bravery, while technically a remake, essentially takes the premise and basic setup of Szifron’s 2005 film—starring Diego Peretti and Luis Luque—and reshapes it. The changes are partly meant to adapt the story to Mexican sensibilities, but more importantly to steer it toward terrain that feels more natural to Winograd. It’s not radically different from Szifron’s approach, but the distinctions are noticeable.

Here, Luis Gerardo Méndez (Narcos: Mexico, Club de Cuervos) and Memo Villegas step into the roles originally played by Peretti and Luque. Méndez plays Mariano Silverstein, a tightly wound psychologist sentenced to community service who is assigned to accompany Alfredo Díaz, a depressed police officer who has just discovered his wife is having an affair. Ill-suited to police work, Silverstein nonetheless finds himself drawn into a case involving intelligence agencies and arms trafficking. At the same time—and in a plot point identical to the original—he discovers that his own wife is cheating on him as well, a revelation that deepens his bond with Díaz.

Leaning more heavily into action than the Argentine film—and abandoning the psychoanalytic angle fairly early on—the Mexican version deploys a range of comedic devices that Winograd, the director of Permitidos, handles with confidence and ease. He gives his actors ample room to shine and improvise, particularly the highly charismatic Méndez, who adopts a distinctive accent and displays a personal, sharply calibrated comic timing that occasionally brings to mind Daniel Hendler. At its core, La hora de los valientes remains the story of two men betrayed by their wives who discover that taking action—any action—is the best way to confront and possibly overcome their respective crises.

In a recent interview, Winograd revealed that Szifron watched his version of the film, “loved it and had very positive things to say,” adding that the remake is different enough from the original to justify a second look. Still, it’s striking to see how a film that once felt relatively fresh and original within Argentine cinema has now become part of a broader, international content machine distributed by Netflix—one that, judging by an ending not entirely unlike the original’s, leaves the door open for future installments. Winograd’s remake does not betray Szifron’s film in the slightest. Quite the opposite. What’s most interesting is to consider the twenty years that have passed since Tiempo de valientes and to recognize how it has already taken on the aura of a classic. And classics, sooner or later, have a way of turning into franchises.