Brothers Under Fire, Starring Kiefer Sutherland

Ordinarily, we would like to think a deployment to Syria would be more dangerous than a vacation in Mexico. Yet, we watched Mexican tourism understandably plummet after retaliatory cartel terror attacks avenging the druglord El Mencho shut down the nation less than two months ago. Unfortunately, Captain Jordan Wright and four of his squad face similar cartel violence when they travel to Mexico for a comrade’s wedding in Justin Chadwick’s Brothers Under Fire, which releases Friday in theaters and on-demand.

Wright is the kind of leader who always brings his men home. Perhaps he can’t truly guarantee that, given the nature of war, but he would willingly die trying. His men razz each other particularly hard, but they always have their brothers’ backs. Naturally, their medic, Alberto Castillo invites Wright, Lt. Carson, country boy Danny Watlon, and cocky Marco Hino to his wedding. It will be a dual celebration, since he just took his U.S. citizenship oath.

His fiancée, Isabella Perez, believes it will be a triple celebration, because she intends to reveal her pregnancy after the wedding. Of course, movie fans know weddings and pregnancy invite tragedy, which in turn requires payback. True to form, Stevie, the reckless brother of a notorious cartel boss crashes the reception with clear intention of making trouble.

Wright and his men will be out-manned and out-gunned, but they have far superior training and discipline. Basically, they find themselves in the position of the Magnificent Seven, except they number even less than that.

Brothers Under Fire is a relatively straight forward action film that happens to be incredibly zeitgeisty. Unfortunately, at this point, nothing in Ian Mackenzie Jeffers and Delbert Hancock’s screenplay can be considered far-fetched. It is all “ripped from the headlines” stuff. As a happy bonus, Justin Chadwick, who is better known for period productions like Tulip Fever and Shardlake, also shows a pleasant facility for staging bullet-strafing action sequences.

FrightFest ’18: Tigers Are Not Afraid

These are not Dickensian street urchins. They are the orphans of Mexico’s drug wars. They survive hand-to-mouth on the streets, constantly fleeing the victorious drug cartel of sadistic Satanists. Yeah, maybe building that wall doesn’t sound so bad anymore. Regardless, fairy tales do not get much darker than Issa Lopez’s Tigers Are Not Afraid (trailer here), which screens during this year’s FrightFest in the UK.

Estrella is on her own. Her school was closed indefinitely after getting riddled with bullets. Soon thereafter, her mother failed to come home one night. The implications are obvious in Estrella’s world, but she remains in denial for what seems like weeks. Eventually, hunger forces her to seek the company of a local gang of misfits, but their leader Shine is instinctively hostile to an older potential rival.

Nevertheless, she will earn her place in the pack when she apparently completes a rather daring task, but the truth is rather more complicated. Regardless, she inadvertently antagonizes the cartel affiliated with the local political boss, as a result. On top of that, Estrella also has weird visions—or perhaps they really are supernatural visitations.

Lopez loads up TANA heavy fairy tale symbolism involving princesses, tigers, serpents, protective chalk, and magical wishes. However, since there is so much quasi-magical realism going on in the margins, none of the individual elements feels excessive or over-wrought. You will rarely hear this here, but this is a case where more was more.

Frankly, it is pretty amazing how much Lopez pulled off on a presumably limited budget. At times, it all looks too self-contained to the brain, as if five or six cartel death cultists massacred the tens of thousands of people living in Estrella’s demilitarized zone of a neighborhood. Yet, the limited and interconnected cast of characters definitely feels apiece with the fairy tale vibe.

Lopez also gets fantastic work out of her young ensemble. Paola Lara is rock solid as the smart but frighteningly vulnerable Estrella. However, the revelatory standout is Juan Ramon Lopez, who is so intense as Shine, it is downright spooky. The various abandoned buildings and scarred urban backdrops also give the film quite a bit of sinister character. The mere fact that Lope had so many such locations available to her is terrifying in its own right.

So, maybe with drug wars raging in Mexico, this isn’t such a great time to abolish ICE after all—or maybe we can just replace it with magic chalk and wishes. These are not idle musings. Despite the fantastical elements, there is an undeniable urgency to TANA. If you want to understand a country’s dark collective subconscious, look at their genre films. In this case, Lopez dares viewers to confront Mexico’s lost generation of drug war orphans and the highly uncertain future they share with the nation. Yet, we still connect with these kids on an emotional level. Highly recommended, Tigers Are Not Afraid screens tonight (8/26), as part of this year’s FrightFest UK.

Kingdom of Shadows: How the Drug War was Lost

We share a very long and largely unenforced border with Mexico. This is a particularly disturbing fact to keep in mind while watching the frequent discovery of mass graves throughout our neighbor to the south. The war on drugs will be blamed, but it is pretty clear that war is over in Mexico and the cartels won. Two former combatants and a courageous nun offer their perspectives on the current state of border anarchy in Bernardo Ruiz’s Kingdom of Shadows (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Sister Consuelo Morales is a woman of great faith and humility, who tirelessly consoles families of the “disappeared” and constantly prods government officials on their behalf. She is the film’s unambiguous moral center, in part because her job is so hard. Frankly, the police in narco hotspots like Monterey are so corrupt, they are often seen as wholly owned subsidiaries of the cartels. Most of the disappearances are probably the work of the cartels, but some wholesale abductions have been traced back to various police forces, which makes absolutely no tactical sense, unless they were trying to get the populace to hate the cops even more, which is a distinct possibility.

Former border patrol officer and undercover agent turned Homeland Security official Oscar Hagelsieb also has a hard job. The narco-terror unfolding in Monterey and spilling over into Texas border towns like Socorro, Texas falls under his jurisdiction. He intercepted a lot of drugs and busted a lot of sinister characters during his undercover days. Ironically, that is one reason he keeps such a high profile now, in the hopes that his past associates will not seek to martyr such a prominent government spokesperson.

Don Henry Ford, Jr. was one of the traffickers Hagelsieb was trying to put away. Someone did indeed bust him and just in the nick of time. If he had been pinched any later, mandatory minimums would have applied. Ford was old school. He dealt with the relatively stable Amado Carrillo. According to Ford, his death left a vacuum that would be filled by a younger generation of sociopaths, an interpretation of history that seems to fit the facts pretty well.

The fact that Kingdom was produced by the highly partisan Participant Media does not inspire confidence, but Ruiz’s brutally honest Reportero earns his follow-up a fair hearing. Fortunately, it is also messily honest, to the point of losing control of its message. Frankly, the Trump campaign ought to bus primary voters to screenings, because it entirely vindicates his border security platform. Sure, there are some tacked-on arguments regarding mandatory drug minimums, but they are overwhelmed and undercut by the images of grisly carnage.

Watching Kingdom (and Reportero before it) gives viewers the impression Mexico is practically a failed state. It is a scary thought, but it certainly makes the paramilitary vigilantes seen in Matthew Heineman’s Cartel Land look reasonable. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of answers in Kingdom, besides chastising America for the drug consumption that fuels the drug violence. That is fair enough, but it is worth remembering the media contempt that greeted Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign. Evidently, that is now the best strategy we have.

Some of its viewpoints are more insightful than others, but there is still plenty of revealing (and disturbing) stuff in Kingdom. It is uneven, but like Reportero, it is a pretty gutsy film. Recommended for its boots-on-the-ground documentary reporting, Kingdom of Shadows opens this Friday (11/20) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

Sundance ’15: Cartel Land

Dr. Jose Mireles is like a kindly Mexican Marcus Welby, except he also happens to be the leader of a group of paramilitary vigilantes. Tim “Nailer” Foley more looks the part of a border militiaman, but he shares a common enemy with Mireles. It is not the illegal immigrant per se that concerns him, but the drug cartels running the human trafficking business. Matthew Heineman documents the full scale breakdown of law and order south of the border and some of the resulting implications for American border towns in Cartel Land (teaser here), which screens today as an award winner at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about “El Doctor” Mireles’ Autodefensas organization is that they operate in the central state of Michoacán, far away from the border. Although Mireles originally attended Autodefensas organizing meetings wearing a mask, he was so recognizable, he simply chose to embrace his role as the group’s public face and spiritual leading. Under his guidance, Autodefensas has been on a roll, liberating town after town from their cartel occupiers. If that sounds like a military campaign, it darn well should.

Meanwhile, Nailer and his Arizona Border Recon group patrol what is known as “Cocaine Alley,” scouring the hills for the cartels’ spotters and traffic directors. Yes, they are also heavily armed. You do not challenge the drug cartels with good intentions and optimism.

Although Cartel Land started out as a project solely about American border patrol groups, Mireles and Autodefensas completely took over the film once Heineman widened the scope. Frankly, it seems like the film is not sure what to make of the Arizona scenes in light of the chaotic drama it documents in Mexico. You can practically feel the film shrug, as if to admit they might have a point.

In contrast, the sequences in Mexico are absolutely harrowing and massively telling. Early on, there is a mind-blowing scene in which an exasperated village rises up against a military unit trying to disarm the Autodefensas. They make it clear, in no uncertain terms, they consider the government to be in league with the cartels. They therefore put their trust in Autodefensas rather than the military. It is stunning stuff, but it should be noted not every village shares this sentiment.

No matter how you feel about the film, you have to give Heineman credit for making it under genuine battle conditions. He was there filming during live firefights, when nobody really knew who was shooting at whom or from where. This is legit war-reporting, just like Sebastian Junger’s Restrepo films.

Cartel Land does not necessarily endorse taking the law into one’s own hands. In fact, many of the scenes in Mexico illustrate the ethical perils of doing so. However, it leaves viewers with no illusions about the complete absence of the rule of law in Mexico today. You can question their on-the-ground tactics, but why it is painfully obvious why Dr. Mireles and his comrades joined together in Autodefensas. Arguably, the film might have been tightened up by editing out more of the Arizona material, but who would want to tell them they ended up on the cutting room floor?

Regardless, Cartel Land is quite an eye-opener as it is. (Since the current president refuses to visit the border, perhaps a private screening can be arranged for him). Recommended for anyone concerned affairs in our hemisphere, Cartel Land screens today (2/1) as a U.S. Documentary Competition winner at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Narco Cultura: Violent Accordion Music

It makes gangster rap sound polite and progressive.  Narcocorrido is a virulent cousin of cajunto, lionizing the drug traffickers and assassins terrorizing Mexico.  Banned in their home country, narcocorridos are largely based in American border cities and do a brisk business through legitimate American retailers. (Indeed, Sam Walton would not be happy to hear what his stores now carry.) Shaul Schwartz observes the state of underground narcocorrido culture and the violence it celebrates in Narco Cultura (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Raised in Los Angeles, Edgar Quintero fetishizes narcoterrorism on stage as the front man of up-and-coming narcocorrido band BuKnas de Culiacan.  Riccardo Soto sees the fruits of narcocorrido culture every night as a crime scene investigator.  On the plus side, Soto’s skills are in high demand.  Unfortunately, he and his colleagues must wear balaclavas to protect their identity when responding to a call.  For obvious reasons, the dedicated family had tendered his resignation, but his sense of duty compelled him to return six months later.

Almost entirely observational in his approach, Schwartz never asks Soto for a review of Quintero’s latest CD.  Nor does he confront Quintero with crime scene photos of the latest innocent bystanders cut down by his idols.  Presumably, Schwartz was concerned about preserving his subjects’ trust and access, as well as maintaining a consistent tone.  However, this obvious avenue of inquiry forgone casts a long, distracting shadow over the film.

At one point, Schwartz revisits the blinged-out cemeteries previously seen in Natalia Almada’s El Velador, but Cultura has considerably more get-up-and-go than its defiantly oblique predecessor.  Things definitely happen in Schwartz’s film, but it is dominated by the bloody aftermaths of the cartels’ ruthless business rather than action per se.

The picture that emerges of a Mexico plagued by bloodshed and corruption is not pretty.  Frankly, it would have been an important wake-up call, but it may have come too late.  Watching the reckless aggression of the narcos, clearly abetted by crooked government officials, it appears Mexico is teetering on the brink of becoming a failed state.  Schwartz never bothers to seek any elusive solutions.  Who knows, maybe France can re-install the heir of Emperor Maximilian.

Narco Cultura is fully stocked with dramatic images, many of which approach the threshold of outright shocking.  Yet, the film is essentially a cinematic shrug, taking it all in, but never delving to deeply into the dysfunctional pop culture it documents.  Far superior to El Velador, but not nearly as emotionally engaging as Bernardo Ruiz’s Reportero, Narco Cultura is still eye opening stuff, recommended for Lou Dobbs watchers when it opens this Friday (11/22) in New York at the AMC Empire.

The Man in the Hood: El Sicario, Room 164

Don’t ask who that masked man is. You don’t want to know. In 2009, a sicario (a professional killer working for the Mexican drug cartels) gave an in-depth interview to Charles Bowden for a revealing Harper’s article. Despite the cartel’s $250,000 bounty, he subsequently consented to a lengthy on-camera interview with Bowden’s filmmaker colleague Gianfranco Rosi, who shaped his pseudo-confession into the documentary El Sicario, Room 164 (trailer here), now playing in New York at Film Forum.

Rosi and Bowden are deliberately sketchy about the details, but the film was shot in a border town hotel room (number 164), where the masked sicario once held and tortured someone who owed money to his cartel. Eventually, he turned the battered man over to another team of sicarios. While he does not know his victim’s ultimately fate, he knowledgeably assumes a grisly end. Though this disturbing information seems to lend considerable significance to the location, it quickly becomes apparent the sicario has done such crimes innumerable times before in similar motels and so-called “safe houses” on either side of the border.

The sicario might very well be embellishing a host of individual details, but the broad strokes he sketches out ring chillingly true. Like a talented young baseball player, the sicario was recruited by his cartel at a young age. After serving a drug-running apprenticeship, the cartel greased his way into the police academy. Yes, the killer is also a copper. He estimates about a quarter of the graduates of all Mexico’s law enforcement academies are cartel plants. Not surprisingly, the free access to squad cars greatly simplifies the kidnapping process.

164 is all kinds of scary. Frankly, it makes it pretty clear narco-terrorist warlords have taken over the country. This is not happening in remote Afghanistan, but along our southern border. It is also evident the current administration is not capable of thinking sufficiently strategically over the long term to combat them in any meaningful way. Sending them a bunch of free guns as part of Operation Fast & Furious just is not going to do it.

Rosi focuses nearly exclusively on the hooded sicario as he uses a sketch pad to delineate the structure and methods of the cartels with icy precision. For occasional bumper shots, he shows scenes of the sicario’s scarred and sordid Juárez, sort of like Ozu transitions from Hell. Essentially, we are in that motel room (or one very much like it) listening to the anonymous assassin. It might not sound especially cinematic, but it is riveting.

If just half of what the sicario says is true, then the drug war is over in Mexico. The cartels won. It is tempting to get hung up on the particulars of his story, most notably his conversion story which rivals that of Saul on the road to Damascus. Then again, there must be some reason he is talking about the inner workings of his former business to director-cinematographer Rosi and co-producer Bowden, in defiance of the quarter million dollar price on his head. Indeed, it might be the most brutal talking head film ever produced, with the off-camera violence palpably lingering in the air. Recommended for viewers who can handle a talky dose of reality, 164 is now playing in New York at Film Forum.