‘The Giant Falls’ Review: Netflix’s Familiar Redemption Story Set Against Iguazú Falls

Part family drama, part illness-centered tearjerker, and part scenic tour of Iguazú Falls, The Giant Falls is an old-fashioned Netflix production that tries hard to squeeze emotion out of its audience—and rarely succeeds. Conventional from every angle, with a lingering aftertaste of 1980s Argentine cinema—perhaps a reflection of what “commercial cinema” will look like in a system driven only by private investment—the eighteenth feature by Marcos Carnevale (Viudas, Elsa & Fred, Corazón de león) hinges on the reappearance of an absent father in his adult son’s life, and everything that unfolds from there.

Boris (Matías Mayer) works as a tour guide leading visitors through the Iguazú Falls, navigating boats that plunge beneath the mist and thunder of the cascading water. His life appears calm and orderly—until it suddenly mirrors that same overwhelming roar. Leaving work one day, he’s approached by a man who wants to speak with him. Boris refuses, walking away without a word. He returns to his routine: spending time with his girlfriend (Johanna Francella), singing karaoke at a local bar, and watching his flamboyant, eccentric mother Leticia (a warm Inés Estévez) perform for scattered customers.

The next day, the “threat” becomes real. The stern stranger shows up at Leticia’s house and reveals what quickly becomes obvious: he is Julián (Oscar Martínez), Boris’s father, who abandoned the family nearly thirty years earlier when his son was just seven. A former pilot now facing serious personal difficulties, Julián has returned to ask for forgiveness and make amends. Boris, still deeply wounded, refuses even to consider it.

From there, The Giant Falls follows the push and pull of this reunion, the possibility of reconciliation, and the increasingly chaotic situations father and son stumble into as their emotional standoff evolves. Along the way, there are arguments, feasts, hospital visits, encounters with the police, and appearances by extended family and friends (with Silvia Kutika in a key role and Luis Luque in a smaller but pivotal one). Despite occasional, unexpected detours into dark comedy, the film relentlessly pushes for emotional impact through a string of contrived dramatic situations that strain and release the central relationship again and again.

A story about second chances, regret, confession, and the desire for closure, The Giant Falls moves along well-trodden paths, hinting at other films it never quite becomes: a drug-fueled comedy, a euthanasia drama, a glossy tourism showcase for Argentina’s landscapes, even the ghost of a family story that never was.

As in his previous film Corazón loco, Carnevale once again centers on a deeply flawed man seeking redemption from those he has hurt—whose lives he has, in many ways, damaged beyond repair. And as before, the attempt at self-pity rings hollow, relying on increasingly extreme situations to justify the unjustifiable and wring emotion from the audience. The manipulation is too visible, too insistent, and ultimately ineffective. Illness doesn’t fix everything. It’s true that it’s never too late to ask for forgiveness—but sometimes it is too late to repair what’s already been broken.