Don't listen to the negative reviews

Boring

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Blistering performances.

Again the score on IMDb is way too low for this biography. The movie deserves a way higher rating then it actually has. Michael Peña played the role of Cesar Chavez brilliantly. From the first minute until the end you are completely absorbed by the story of this civil rights fighter. A non-violent fighter that deserves a lot of respect for what he has done for the poor, fighting the system and the rich elite in this corrupted world. It's thanks to men like him that poor people get their voice heard. Too bad the world has not more men like Cesar Chavez because we seriously need more of those. It's time that the rich become lesser rich and the poor lesser poor.

This fast paced film is simply riveting. Producer Diego Luna cast Michael Peña in the lead. Peña honestly portrays one of the most important leaders in American labor struggles. John Malkovich joins Luna, co-producing as well as in acting in a villainous role. He exquisitely plays a fictionalized composite, an exploitative Machiavellian grower, comfortable with manipulating family as well as local and national public officials to frustrate Chavez's organizing,and not above promoting lethal violence when it suited his agenda.The movie tracks the dangerous and demanding path taken by Chavez in the decades it took for him and his compañeros to win dignity and living wages for mostly Hispanic and Filipino farm workers. It faithfully displays his courage, religious devotion, acumen and self sacrifice, and the alliances he built, as well as the political and public relations solidarity and coups necessary for success. Only so much can be covered in a film of this length, but it fairly faithfully tracks his intense commitment to "la causa," and how that conflicted with his competing desires to be a father, husband and provider. It touches on his personal sacrifices that extended to long fasts and marches of hundreds of miles, and a willingness to be subjected to brutal physical and political attacks meant to defeat his efforts, but never abandoning Ghandian non-violence. His career, though longer due to Martin Luther King's youthful assassination, overlaps King's considerably in era, unwavering commitment, allies and methods.Given the magnitude of the substantial task to portray such a major and complex figure and movement, the development of other important characters suffers. They include his brother Richard (played by Jacob Vargas), his career-long ally and foil, activist Dolores Huerta (Rosario Dawson) who has outlived and outperformed most of her contemporaries, and the late, long time United Farm Workers powerhouse attorney/negotiator, Jerry Cohen, though all deliver strong performances. Absent from the screenplay are the equally demanding lettuce strike and most of the frustrations with the Teamsters Union and the UFW's eventual settlement with them.This film recapitulates an essential part of late 20th Century American political and social history that legitimately deserves a wider audience than it will likely receive.

This movie was as accurate and as realistic as it could be when packing many years of struggle into 100 minutes. There are many lessons to be learned from La Causa. I just hope that young people see it, learn from it and connect it to today's struggles.Some uninformed people may feel that Michael Pena's acting is weak..that couldn't be further from the truth. Pena portrayed Cesar the way he was...soft-spoken and undramatic. That was the amazing thing.. Cesar Chavez was driven by his passion for justice. He was not a politician. He was not an eloquent public speaker. Yet he inspired millions to boycott, march, strike, struggle because his cause was so moral, so real, so grass roots.

I don't know much about Caesar Chavez. the only thing I knew for sure was that he fought for union rights during the Civil rights movement and that he went on a hunger strike for this reason. Now, I'm not the one to use a movie as a history lesson but I figure the part of about him leading his workers on work strike for 5 years to achieve a better union for Farmers and starting a credit union for them must be correct. Since the movie is named after the man himself, that's what it should focus on more, the man himself.In what was a big career move for Micheal Pena his performance as the great Chavez was so-so. maybe this is what the filmmakers wanted in order to portray how just an ordinary man changed so many lives. However, Pena's presence on the big screen was not big enough. Of what should have been an inspiring story , I felt no inspiration. It just was not strong enough to convince me to rise up ageist anyone. Unlike the two movies that came out last year about Nelson Mandela, in comparison to Idris Elba, whose performance was strong and demanding to Terrence Howard, whose version of Mandela was not even the focal point of the movie Winnie Mandela, just made me believe in a cause that, I will admit, thought I knew about but really did not.I'll give the movie an A for effort as I'm sure their are not many films about this important figure in American History and hope that the next person doing his story in a movie will find someone a little more convincing.