When news broke that Benito “Bad Bunny” Martinez Ocasio would take center stage in the new movie by Residente, it marked more than a paycheck for the genre-defying artist — it signaled a moment when a global pop phenomenon steps into the spotlight of historical cinema.
The film, “Porto Rico“, is the feature directorial debut of fellow Puerto Rican icon René Pérez Joglar, an ambitious epic that blends Caribbean Western flair with the sweep of a historical drama, built on real events and deep cultural roots.
Inside Porto Rico: The Film Marking a New Acting Era for Bad Bunny
“Porto Rico” draws an uncommon constellation of talent, with Bad Bunny’s first leading role supported by acclaimed actors such as Viggo Mortensen, Javier Bardem and Edward Norton, and shepherded by Oscar-winning figures both behind and in front of the camera.
Bad Bunny and Residente (Source: Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images — Mat Hayward/Getty Images for IMDb)
But Porto Rico aims to be more than a career milestone for its star; it is framed as a reckoning with Puerto Rico’s own layered past, a narrative that Residente has called a “reaffirmation of who we are“.
Co-written with Oscar-winning scribe Alexander Dinelaris (Birdman) and backed by powerhouse producer Alejandro G. Iñárritu, the film seeks to hold the contradictions and conflicts of colonial legacy in its gaze.
What emerges isn’t just spectacle but an attempt to translate memory into myth — to lift the island’s history from the margins of pop culture into the grand, fiery arc of cinema itself.
