Sergio review – Ana de Armas shines in standard-issue biopic

There is a tendency with biopics to feel like exercises in list-ticking: formulaic, uninspired, safe. Like homework, they often come to us as obligations rather than as something to get the pulse racing. Sergio, the new film about the life of United Nations diplomat Sergio Vieria de Mello, commits almost every sin associated with the generic biopic, though it just about justifies a viewing based on two factors: likeable leads, and a heart that's in the right place.

On paper, documentarian-turned-feature filmmaker Greg Barker is the ideal person to direct a movie about the UN envoy who became renowned for his skills in helping to broker peace in turbulent nations around the world. Barker helmed a documentary on the same subject, also called Sergio, back in 2009. Now, with actor Wagner Moura (elegantly commanding) cast as Sergio, he brings his expert knowledge to the material, but – perhaps in a bid to avoid remaking his own documentary – steers clear of the overtly political.

Instead Barker leans into the romantic side of Sergio's life – more specifically his relationship with real life UN economic adviser Carolina Larriera, played here by Knives Out's own Ana de Armas. In that film she was sweet and meek, a force of goodness in a movie packed with irredeemable assholes; here she's deployed as a sexy journalist who spends the movie clad in summer dresses and bed sheets, but whose real purpose is to humanise Sergio beyond his work.

The movie's all the better for it. Barker isn't afraid to emphasise De Armas' beauty, the camera lingering on her twinkling expressions as she realises who she's falling in love with. It's corny, in places, but it's in this relationship that the movie comes to life. It's never romance for romance's sake, either: Barker wants to show us that despite his saintly reputation, Sergio was a man of flesh and blood, a questionable father who made mistakes – and perhaps, the film suggests, was prone to a form of arrogance or short-sightedness that would contribute to his untimely death in 2003.

The rest is standard-issue biopic fare, cheap looking and far too glossy – the kind of film to make you miss the era of journalistic war films that produced the likes of Under Fire, The Killing Fields, and Salvador. Screenwriter Craig Borten also commits a number of questionable structural mistakes, relying on a Russian doll of flashbacks in which fragments of Sergio's life are repeatedly intercut with the explosive incident that would eventually claim his life. This attempt to get creative plays instead as disjointed and chaotic, non-linear for non-linear's sake.

To spend two hours in the company of any film is to ask that it delivers just a few moments that will stay with you. Here, a rain-drenched kiss come close, but little else sticks. Yet Barker's admiration and attempt to probe his subject's inner life still leaves a mark. Those who know little of Sergio will likely appreciate the education, whilst romantics will find there's enough chemistry here to deliver on the promises of an old-fashioned love story. It makes for a respectable, watchable film, but any traces of remarkableness are reserved entirely for the actual man.

Sergio is now streaming on Netflix.