Sicario

Which is why I keep recommending Cartel Land :)... see it, and then let's talk about Sicario :). Cartel Land is everything Sicario should have been, but wasn't, and you get to appreciate how very much deeper and more nuanced the story of the War On Drugs is, and how very, very, very, very "Hollywood" Sicario was. Now, as a general rule, I give movies a lot of slack, which is why I'm not going to completely rubbish Sicario - it was an OK flick for what it was, and I've seen much worse out of Hollywood. But what got my back up is the incessant claims by its fans of how fantastic (stella!) it was - especially when there are serious hack elements all over the place, including IMHO extremely poor camera placement and editing.

But I'm telling you guys: see Cartel Land. It's almost unbelievable that it's a documentary - it feels like a total movie, a much, much better movie than Sicario, with all the classical elements: stunning character arcs, amazing nuance and humanity, the complexity of the issue, and purely visually a tour de force. Compare the real life interrogation scenes to the interrogation scenes in Sicario. Real life gun battles vs Sicario. Real life night vision footage and Sicario. Over and over and over again: no comparison. This is what Sicario should have aspired to, and fell woefully short along every axis.
 
I saw it on netflix, but you can rent it for like $4 on google play for example and so on - that right there saves you a buck :)! But then again, I've never watched anything on google play so I don't know if it's worth it quality-wise.
 
Done...I watched the free 360p version of Cartel Land on YouTube. Initial reactions:
-Astonishing access. That gringo really plopped himself in the middle. Remarkable the indifference to him and the shamelessness of all parties before the camera: meth cookers, torturers, and the cradle-robber.
-Edit. Couple transitions I loved (e.g. heart-rate monitor bleeding into gunfire). Reminded me of Apocalypse Now.
-Character complexity. The truth is more satisfying than Sicario's fiction. That said, I still don't think we got the full story of the doctor's alienation. Bizarre, irrational move on the pretext of chasing young tail. If there were simmering feuds with his Autodefensia underlings based on his screwing their wives or something, I could start to see it.
-There's a book called "King Rat" about an American POW in WWII that I think pretty well captures the fall in this movie. The whole camp works to this one guy's benefit so that he lives like a relative king among the POWs, until the camp's liberation upends this structure. And the turn on him is swift and brutal.
 
I think it's a mistake to compare the two movies. While on the surface they cover the same, or similar, subject matter, they're actually about completely different things (and, of course, one is a commercial movie, the other is a doc).

Sicario is about the slow transition of the security services, under the pressures of the wars on drugs and terror, into just another gang, albeit a much bigger and better armed one; and about the demise of the rule of law. Cartel Land is basically Orwell.
 
Tim Sewell said:
I think it's a mistake to compare the two movies. While on the surface they cover the same, or similar, subject matter, they're actually about completely different things (and, of course, one is a commercial movie, the other is a doc).

Sicario is about the slow transition of the security services, under the pressures of the wars on drugs and terror, into just another gang, albeit a much bigger and better armed one; and about the demise of the rule of law. Cartel Land is basically Orwell.
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That's funny, because in that description of Sicario you just made, I see Cartel Land. Terrible abuses by drug cartels preying on the population - and the drug cartels have bought out the state security services, so that the population has nowhere to turn, and the security services are just another predator in league with the cartels. Then - when the population has nowhere to turn, some among them organize a kind of self-defence force that takes on the drug cartels, since "legit" state security will not help (as they are in league with the cartels). A brutal fight ensues between the self defence forces and the drug cartels - outside of the useless law, a vigilante struggle. The self-defence forces, led by charismatic individuals, become successful enough to become their own power center, and power corrupts, soon the self-defence force having run out the cartels starts to abuse their power and prey upon the population who in turn start to reject them. Soon, the corrupt state security services align with the corrupt self-defence vigilante forces and they now become simply another gang eventually also dealing in drugs... which is how another cartel is born, having replaced the previous one, again sanctioned and legitimized by the corrupt state security. Of the people, by the people. Crime and tragedy, power and corruption. And behind it all - survival, because that's what drugs are: money. And where there is desperation, and money, there is power and corruption.

The subject matter is the same indeed. But it is handled by Cartel Land by reality. And in Sicario, by Hollywood fiction. They run in parallels. But Cartel Land doesn't need to invent anything, only depict and report. Like any throwaway parallel: Sicario - the orphaned boy, son of policeman; Cartel Land - the now corrupt self-defence forces kidnap the father of the girl who becomes hysterical next to her crying mother. Real life - Hollywood.

Reality is infinitely more complex than what is depicted in Sicario. The arc of the Benicio character, and such as it is, the Emily Blunt character; Cartel Land - the doctor arcs from hero of the people's organized self-defence to a much more complex character, brought down as much by his own weaknesses and creeping megalomania as by assassination attempts by cartels and arrest threat by corrupt state power. There is a flatness to the world of Sicario that cannot hope to reflect the complexities as seen by the reality reflected in Cartel Land.

And have we gotten the "whole story" in Cartel Land? Yes and no. If "no", that's because in real life, you almost never "get the whole" story - reality is too complicated, full of loose ends and unresolved endings and unknown paths and speculation - unlike movies (especially bad Hollywood movies), where everything is tied up with a bow in the end and we ride off into the sunset. But also "yes", because it is a true slice of life, true to its full complexity which includes unresolved themes and enigmas... as the best fiction films try to imitate - by also featuring unresolved endings and questions left deliberately unanswered - in this respect, if you trust my judgment, do yourself a favor and watch Cache (Hidden) by Michael Haneke - a bravura piece of filmmaking you owe to yourself as a filmmaker to see (I'm really not trying to make anyone spend money!).

On a completely technical note - Cartel Land is an awesomely made documentary, purely technically, quite apart from their stunning access and reportage. And frankly, I am as impressed by that purely technical side of Cartel Land as I am unimpressed by the technical side of Sicario... which is what originally sparked this thread. All IMHO. YMMV.
 
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Denis Villeneuve is actually a good director. His style is just not what OldCorpse was looking for. Villeneuve's style is calm, controlled, and paced; and OldCorpse, I think what you were looking for was handheld 16mm. I don't even think his camerawork is that on the nose. There are several oblique angles: action happens off screen as the camera is close up on some detail.

The biggest mistake Villeneuve made was that infamous scene at the bar. But all he had to do was cut the preface where Ted stares creepy at Kate from afar. If he had just begun with Ted coming up to Reggie and Kate at their table, it would have worked. We wouldn't know for sure if he was a good guy or bad guy.

The screenplay is the most to blame. As Batutta pointed out, it's a classic case of the passive protagonist. Studios should know by now. She's not even likable, just someone who looks surprised at things that are not that surprising, scared by things that should not be so scary to an FBI field agent, and who gets in the way of everything in the name of doing everything by the book. Characters like this are often auxiliary antagonists (like the investigator from the EPA in Ghostbusters or the chief of police in most movies). Matt and Alejandro are more protagonistic, but they're too two-dimensional to feel anything for.

A couple of things I liked were Reggie's subtle sense of humor and the vignettes of Silvio before his story runs into the main one.
 
combatentropy said:
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The screenplay is the most to blame. As Batutta pointed out, it's a classic case of the passive protagonist. Studios should know by now. She's not even likable, just someone who looks surprised at things that are not that surprising, scared by things that should not be so scary to an FBI field agent, and who gets in the way of everything in the name of doing everything by the book. Characters like this are often auxiliary antagonists (like the investigator from the EPA in Ghostbusters or the chief of police in most movies). Matt and Alejandro are more protagonistic, but they're too two-dimensional to feel anything for...
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But a director is responsible for the entire project. It's his job to select his type script doctors tol eliminate the "idiot plot".

And, if Blunt acts as if she were constipated in every scene, then hire someone with a bit of an acting ability.
 
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