I truely like the full-shots from the helicopter/plane. Sometimes you can get a better understanding only by stepping back and observing from far away. However, the background music at some point makes me feel like this is a Transformer movie, and little bit over.
This is the last movie of this course. It’s quite interesting to look back and think about how the two musical movies in the 30th (Flying Down to Rio) and the 40th (Down Argentine Way), with the Good Neighbour Policy in power, tried to depict Latin America as exotic but at the same time not too much different from the North, so that the two continents could be allies and could work together for the region. Now in this final movie, the good and the bad are not too different as well. Although as most of the time the “bad” guys are the Latinos and the “good” guys are Americans, but in the end we discover that the “good” American is using a “bad” Latino to wipe out another “bad” Latino, and the “bad” Latino is using the “good” American to get personal revenge. It seems like a win-win situation, that the outlaw is terminated in the end, but actually it’s at the expense of turning the law-enforcement into the outlaw. And there is no going back. “This is the land of wolves.” How can lambs kick the wolves out?
We’ve been obsessed by the word “hero” in the past few classes. Some of us argue that there is no need for the existence of a hero in movies like, for example The Three Burials, in which I really don’t see why we should heroize Pete or Norton. However, this movie is clearly an American “hero movie”. Cops are the most common heroes in this world. So can we nominate Matt as hero? He is CIA and designs the operation to wipe out the Mexican cartel, but he doesn’t work by the book. Can we say Alejandro is a hero? He kills the big boss of the Mexican cartel who’s responsible for the explosion which killed two of Kate’s men and many many other crimes, but he belongs to Columbian cartel. Can we call Kate or Reggie a hero? They work by the book, but probably by themselves and by the book they would never find the big boss. How do we define a hero? By the process of what he’s done or by the result of what he’s done, or something else? I don’t believe there is universal answer, and every one has a hero which match their own criteria.
So for me, what is true and eternal is that there is nothing eternal and true. The North and the South are “others” reciprocally, but maybe in the future they will become the same self once they find a common “others”, let’s say, ET?
My last doubt is, by crossing the border, either North or South, does it makes you “other”? or is it just a fantasy?
Heh, perhaps we have been obsessed by heroes. But if we continue along that train of thought, my first suggestion is that this is a film without a hero. Kate might be the obvious candidate, but in the end it’s clear that she really has no power or influence over anything that happens; she’s an observer at best, an alibi at worst.
Likewise, as you say, surely this is a movie without any good guys. Or at least, the good guys (Kate and Reggie) are utterly powerless, both against the drug trade and against the disregard for legality and due process shown by Matt, Alejandro, and co.
But surely Matt and Alejandro are equally powerless? They think that it’s only by sidestepping or bending the rules that they can really make a difference, but isn’t the point of the final scene with Silvio’s son that there’ll simply be another generation of narcos (and sicarios) to take the place of those that we see killed?