In a new Netflix film, a scrappy team of youngsters enters the world’s richest fishing tournament, hoping to save their orphanage with the prize money.
It might sound like a Disney creation, but that’s exactly what happened in Baja California Sur in 2014. Now, a movie based on true events, is set to stream on Netflix.
At the time, Hurricane Odile had just hit Los Cabos, and the region was still struggling to clean up the mess. For the Casa Hogar orphanage, times were particularly difficult. They needed money. To get it, they entered the Bisbee’s Black and Blue fishing tournament, a high profile event that drew 125 teams to compete for US $2.14 million in prize money.
The first win was just getting into the elite tournament. Because of the hurricane, the tournament waived their normal, prohibitively high entry fee to allow local fishermen to enter — and Casa Hogar got a spot.
Next, the orphanage administrator, Omar Venegas, landed a 385-pound blue marlin, the biggest of the tournament, winning more than $250,000 for Casa Hogar.
Now the epic story of the team’s triumph is available on Netflix in a movie starring Dennis Quaid.
The film, which Variety describes as a “wholesomely hokey family film,” follows Venegas (played by Jimmy Gonzalez) as he pairs up with Wade Malloy (Dennis Quaid), a two-time winner of the tournament, to score a win for the orphanage.
The movie currently has a rating of 6.6 out of 10 on the Internet Movie Database while it received three stars from the newspaper The Guardian, which described the film as formulaic but charming, with an “undeniably rousing” finale.
Sources: The Guardian (en), Variety (en)
