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Cartel Land

2/1/2017

4 Comments

 

B
​2.92

A documentary about the US-Mexican border.

Directed by Matthew Heineman
Initial Review by Lane Davis

Picture
​The War on Drugs began in 1971 when Richard Nixon went on television and announced that drug abuse was public enemy number one. As it turns out, the greatest enemy in the war on drugs may not be the drugs themselves, or maybe not even the people that perpetuate the buying and selling of these substances. Instead, perhaps the greatest enemy—for sure the greatest disservice to the people of North America—has been the stubborn over-simplification of an incredibly complex situation. The problem is organizationally complex; governmentally complex; and as this week’s film, “Cartel Land” shows, this ongoing (almost) 40 year war is as much a problem of the complexity of human nature as anything else.

“Cartel Land” tells dual narratives of the Mexican drug trade—one told from the perspective of citizen vigilante’s in Michoacan, Mexico, and the other from the perspective of an American citizen militia attempting to track down drug and human traffickers on the Arizona/Mexico border. The work of any story on U.S./Mexico drug narratives—whether fictional or real—is to resist that stubborn over-simplification into dualism—good and evil; white hats vs. black hats. Even the main characters themselves resist complicating their own relationships to drugs and law.
 
“Nailer” Foley, as leader of the Arizona militia, is intent that he and his crew are acting on the side of justice (no matter that stockpiling automatic weapons and then using them to hunt down human beings in the dessert is ethically dubious, even if Arizona law plays fast and loose with immigration enforcement). The ends justify the means in Foley’s world, and his quest to chip away at the foundation of the cartels becomes a part of his own narrative of purification. His life is simple, in his telling, “I once was lost, but now am found, and have taken up arms to justify my existence.”
 
On the Mexican side, we have Dr. Jose Manuel Mireles. When we first meet “El Doctor” (before we know he’s a doctor), he’s practicing his sharp shooting and waxing poetic about the need to be ready to use force when provoked. When we see him practicing medicine in his clinic, we’re supposed to be reminded of other revolutionary figures—Che Guevera chiefly, who was also a doctor before helping to lead the Cuban revolution in the ‘50’s—who have both the charisma and unnatural resolve to lead in the face of danger and attempted assassinations.
 
Mireles helps to organize the Autodefensas who began systematically taking back the Michoacan territory from the Knights Templar cartel, which the director, Heineman captures in several stunning scenes of street fights, gun battles, and midnight raids. Where the film soars is in these fast paced, POV scenes—jumping in and out of the back of cars, gun fire echoing through city streets. There were a few points in the film where I thought, “There’s no way this isn’t scripted” but sure enough, this is real, on the ground stuff that Heineman and his crew caught.
 
By the middle of the film, it becomes evident that maybe the doctor we should associate Mireles with isn’t necessarily a benevolent Che, but is instead a corrupted Faust. In, perhaps, the most chilling scene of the film for me, Mireles leads a group of Autodefensas at a car checkpoint, where they take a suspected Templar and, under Mireles’ order, torture him to gain information and then kill him. In the next scenes we see Mireles playing with his grandchildren and leading inspiring rallies talking about the rights of people to live free and prosper. I’m sure Mireles would also say that the ends justify the means.
 
What Heineman gets right in this film is the complexity that defies easy explanation. Foley is easier to explain away, as is the whole Arizona narrative, as people provoked by poverty, hardship, and Sean Hannity into paranoia and violence. I’m pretty sure I know who Foley voted for this past election. There’s probably an even deeper story to tell in Foley’s narrative, and Heineman does a good job of getting to much of it, but the stories dramatic arc paled in comparison to the tragedy of the Mexican side.
 
Mireles is the real star of this movie, and the time allotted to his narrative shows it. Here’s a man that feels passionately about his people, and yet can be as brutal as the people he hunts. Here’s a man who offers his life for protection of the Michoacan population, yet uses his fame and influence to cheat on his wife. Complexity abounds.
 
The best films on the drug wars widen the implications of involvement beyond the principle actors and indict all of us. “Traffic” and “Sicario” are two good recent example, and “Narcos” on Netflix did a great job of telling the Columbian story. If Heineman’s film ran into any trouble, it’s mainly on just how you end a story like this, because the story itself never does end.
 
Complex systems don’t simplify themselves. Heineman, thankfully, doesn’t offer easy answers.
 
Grade: B+
4 Comments
Jon
2/4/2017 12:06:07 am

An extremely relevant documentary in light of recent events, Matthew Heineman's Cartel Land finds adaptation-ready subjects on both sides of the US and Mexico border. With the Autodefensas in Mexico, the plot of the 1960's Magnificent Seven is basically playing out in real life, as charismatic leaders are rallying oppressed civilians to fight back against anarchic forces that are exploiting them. North of the border, there's a potential redemption story, where a down-on-his-luck man goes to prevent them Mexicans from taking jobs, only to find out that the real enemy is the cartels that are driving the migrants there in the first place. As Lane says, nothing is ever so simple. Heineman finds the digestible story appropriate for a snippet on the evening news, draws the viewer in, and then spends enough time with those stories to find where everything starts to break down and disabuse the viewer of any simplistic notions. By the fourth or fifth time a character is asserting that they're on the side of right, it becomes clear that only someone unsure would ever say something like that out loud.

The best documentaries find something unique to report on, and it's to Cartel Land's credit that at least the Mexican side of the coin is something completely novel to me. The story of El Doctor and the Autodefensas is far beyond the other drug documentary I recently watched, The House I Live In, which had a much broader focus on drug policy, specifically incarceration. Finding people on the ground instead of spending time getting talking-head interviews with government officials or academics is a strong choice by Heineman, and keeps his documentary far more cinematic than most.

From the second Mireles steps onscreen, he feels like a Western hero, born with a sun-damaged tan and a walrus mustache. Nailer, his American counterpart, was motivated by being unable to find a construction job after the biggest economic collapse of his lifetime; Mireles and those that follow him have lost family members to brutal violence and are themselves on hit lists. The difference in stakes stacks the deck in El Doctor's favor, and everything about the way he carries himself seals it. He's living an NRA poster, taking up arms to defend his community and his nation against those who would violently tear it apart. There is raw emotional power in the scenes of the Autodefensas striking back. In a superb blend of editing and serendipity, Heineman is able to tell a horrific story of two cartel lieutenants, and then film their capture while another of their victims rages at them, holding back tears as he demands to know where his uncles' bodies are buried. This sequence, among others, gets the stark human drama happening in Michoacan, and the appeal of the good-evil narrative Heineman is presenting in the first half of his film.

There's nowhere near that level of interest on the north side of the border. I feel like all these guys are the same, and if you've seen one Frontline doc about one group, you're pretty much all set. Nailer and the Arizona Border Recon aren't saying anything that one couldn't read on a Blaze message board, blowing dog whistles until someone finally drops the facade and praises segregation. Maybe it's residual election frustration, but they're just not sympathetic, or relatable, or even fascinating. Nailer cuts a striking figure with his pale eyes and his higher-than-expected voice (the explicit white supremacist also had a high voice; coincidence or overcompensating for low testosterone?), but I'm exhausted by tales like his after reading story after story about Trump voters, of which Nailer undoubtedly signed on for after Trump got a 'wa' sound out of his mouth.

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Jon
2/4/2017 12:06:40 am

The two plot lines intersect right as Nailer is learning about Mireles, edited to be at the point where Mireles is recovering from his plane crash injuries. Nailer praises him, wishing something similar would happen in the US. In more excellent pacing, Heineman and his editors proceed to show how foolish Nailer is to want anything like that level of vigilantism in the US. Less capable leaders than Mireles are losing initiative with the civilians, more haphazard militias are running torture sites and cruelly ripping men from their families based on mistaken identity, and we ultimately see that the whole endeavor against drugs has been funded by drugs the entire time. All these beautiful scenes of community and self-sufficiency haven't exactly been for naught, but they are poisoned once the viewer gets the complete picture. Mireles' fall from grace becomes thorough and complete by the end, barely recognizable the last time we see him.

Heineman's you-are-there style of filmmaking is truly impressive, as I don't believe I've ever seen a cameraman have to put his hand into the frame to adjust the lens due to surprise gunfire. Cartel Land is certainly a cinematic achievement with one towering discovery of an individual in Mireles. I do wish Nailer et al were more closely tied to the narrative, or failing that, excised completely. Aside from the scene of Nailer seeing Mireles on the news, I don't think he adds anything to the story or the theme. The militias are paranoid that the cartels could replicate their Mexican violence in the US, but if the juxtaposition is going to be the theoretical fear of violence and the steps taken to allay that fear, and what it is to actually live with violence and how one responds, as Mireles asks the camera, then one story is always going to be vastly superior to the other. The Autodefensas saga gets an A for the visceral nature of everything happening there, so confidently edited and captured that it's hard to believe Heineman didn't stage any of it. The ABR is a vaguely familiar, side-eyed look at an eccentric American subculture, a far more anodyne recipe for a documentary and somewhere in the C-range. The combination is a strong B. I look forward to the adaptation of Mireles' life, starring Demian Bechir from Machete Kills.

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Bryan
2/7/2017 01:52:09 pm

Documentaries need to be educational or engaging. Cartel Land doesn't have an overly engaging story - Mireles is interesting and we've all seen enough Trump to know the border militia is way more of a common thought then we'd like. Personally, I've listened to enough news to know the horrors of cartels beheading townspeople so that aspect of the story wasn't eye opening or riveting.

17-22 year old Bryan would have been all in to learn and engage in this story. 32 year old Bryan is exhausted and can barely focus. Cartel Land is fine, but it's not a must see. B-/C+, I don't know.

PS: The stereotype of our Ivy League friend selecting a subtitled documentary is rich..

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Cooker
2/7/2017 03:48:08 pm

I was disappointed that this wasn’t about a new drug-themed amusement park, and after all the uses of the word vigilante, there was no mention of Batman.

Interesting take on the drug wars in Mexico and Batman-ish groups along the border. I know that the war on drugs will never end, but I hope that one day El Guapo’s dickitry will be put in its place. Decent documentary; also going with a B on this one.

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