Beautiful, tormented Mexico. A still from the new documentary “Cartel Land.”
I’ve been obsessed with Mexico lately, as y’all have undoubtedly noticed. That obsession is never far from the surface and lately it’s been tapped hard.
My passion for frontier history intersects with a near-compulsive attraction to dark crime fiction in what my friend the outstanding author/editor Craig McDonald calls Borderland Noir. (Check out his novel “El Gavilan” for a fine thriller that demonstrates that “the border” in contemporary American life is everywhere — even Ohio).
While exploring the borderlands of the Internet I found two movies — one a thriller, the other a documentary — that are on the must-see list.
The thriller is “Sicario,” due out in September. It was big hit at Cannes. Here’s the trailer.
Variety calls it “a blisteringly suspenseful, ever surprising cartel thriller.”
Two years after making his U.S. debut with the crackerjack kidnapping drama “Prisoners,” French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve ups his own ante with “Sicario,” a blisteringly intense drug-trade thriller that combines expert action and suspense with another uneasy inquiry into the emotional consequences of violence. A densely woven web of compelling character studies and larger systemic concerns, Villeneuve and screenwriter Taylor Sheridan’s bleaker, more jaundiced riposte to Steven Soderbergh’s 2000 “Traffic” may prove too grim and grisly for some audiences and too morally ambiguous for others…
Well, grim and grisly and morally ambiguous are enticements for me. I know. I make no excuses. Character is fate. I ride the trail blazed by Cormac McCarthy and James Carlos Blake…
The second is out this month — a documentary titled “Cartel Land.”
In making his documentary “Cartel Land,” director Matthew Heineman gained access to vigilante movements, on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border, pushing back against the drug cartels. He interviewed victims to heinous horrors, and the operators of a Mexican meth lab….
In the Mexican state of Michoacan, he followed Jose Mireles, a physician who leads the Autodefenses citizens group fighting the violent Knights Templar drug cartel. In Arizona’s Altar Valley he followed Tim Foley, who leads a citizens paramilitary group patrolling the border.
Here’s the trailer for that one.
I have always found Emily Blunt wildly attractive, in a genuine and down-to-earth kind of way. And with a shotgun? Be still my noir-obsessed heart.
john maddox roberts says
Fun fact: “Sicario” comes from the Latin “sicarius”: “daggerman.” The sica was a curved knife carried concealed by thugs. A larger version was used in the arena by Thracian gladiators. The curved knife was classified as “dishonorable” under Roman law. The legionary’s straight, double-edged pugio was classified as an “honorable” weapon.
JimC says
Thanks for that JMR. It all goes back to Rome, doesn’t it?