John Malkovich co-stars as the owner of a large industrial grape farm who leads the opposition to Chavez's organizing efforts.

Pearson says his script focuses on the positive aspects of Chavez's personality, family life, and public accomplishments, but it is not a whitewash.

[6] The producers of Chavez include Diego Luna, Gael Garcia Bernal, and Pablo Cruz (all principals of Canana Films); John Malkovich, Lianne Halfon, and Russell Smith (principals in Malkovich's production company, Mr. Mudd); writer Keir Pearson; and TV producer Larry Meli.

[6] Chicago-born Michael Peña stars as Chavez, the Mexican American labor leader born in Yuma, Arizona, in 1927.

His father, a Mexican farmer who emigrated to the United States, almost wept when Peña told him that he was going to play Cesar Chavez.

In contrast to Michael Peña, Ferrera (who was born in Los Angeles, California, to parents who had emigrated from Honduras) said she had learned a great deal about who Cesar Chavez was while growing up and in school.

Ferrera says that she learned that Helen Chávez pushed her husband hard to keep the farmworker movement alive, all while raising eight children.

[6] Rosario Dawson was cast as Dolores Huerta, the New Mexico-born daughter of a union activist and New Mexico state assemblyman who co-founded the United Farm Workers with Chavez.

Malkovich agreed to the role because he admired Luna's previous film, and wished to take part in telling an important story about fairness.

But many rural and urban parts of Mexico still look as California did in the 1960s, which proved critical in obtaining a sense of visual realism for the film.

In addition to choosing locations which looked like California in the 1960s, actors were taught to speak in a Chicano dialect typical of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The website's critical consensus states: "Too in awe of its subject's great works to present him as a human being, Cesar Chávez settles for trite hagiography.

[11] One negative review, from historian Matt Garcia, expressed that the film concentrates too much on hero-making and avoids criticism and complexity, but offers that this is a limitation of the biopic genre.

[14] Matt Garcia, in the Smithsonian Magazine, went further in his criticism of the movie for diminishing the role of other Mexican-American labor activists, as well as the many white volunteers and organizers who assisted Chavez and the strike.