Matthew Heineman's multi-award-winning and Oscar-nominated documentary, CARTEL LAND

TrustMovies is not certain why, but there does seem to be a hex on making an acceptable film about what some people call the "drug wars" and the country of Mexico -- whether that film be a narrative (like Oliver Stone's crass, slick and sleazy violence-porn Savages, Ridley Scott's ludicrously pretentious The Counselor, or the Denis Villeneuve's more recent starts-out-well-then-turns-ridiculous Sicario) or documentaries from Bernardo Ruiz's limited-in-scope and somewhat shallow Kingdom of Shadows to the film under consideration here: CARTEL LAND. Is this because the subject is simply too awful, crazy, ugly, impossibly huge and hydra-headed to even begin to pin down? Or perhaps it is due more to the fact that so much dishonesty, venality and betrayal is embedded here that any film tackling the subject runs the risk of embroiling itself in the very culture it depicts.

Whatever, this latest drug cartel documentary via director Matthew Heineman (shown at left), which has found its way into the five films nominated for Best Documentary "Oscar," though one of the better examples TrustMovies has encountered in all of these docs and narratives, still ends up making one question what has been left out of the movie as much as what is actually in it. The film blends two narrative strands, one of which involves an American-set group of para-military vigilantes who say they are trying to stop this violent Mexican drug war culture from entering our country (hello: It has been here for decades now) and is much less interesting and important than the second strand.

That would be the tale of a "noble," small-town Mexican doctor, José Mireles (shown above), who appears to have determined to rid the area surrounding his town of Michoacán of these drug lords and their crews. Why this is so necessary is explained early on, as townfolk tell of the slaughter of a particular family of fruit-pickers. We do not see this but only hear of it, but the telling is particularly horrible. (It was enough to prevent a good friend of mine from even continuing with the film.)

To achieve this riddance Mireles organizes a group of vigilantes who become surprisingly successful in their task. The police and elected officials, corrupt as ever, not only offer no help but actively try to dissuade these "Autodefensas" from bearing down on the particular drug cartel involved in the Michoacán area. So far so good. But when an accident involving a plane crash derails Mireles, and the good doctor turns over the running of the Autodefensas to a cute little gnome-like fellow known as Papa Smurf, things begin to fall apart.

How and why we see glimpses of,  and this is enough to make us question the reliability of just about everyone involved -- including the filmmaker. Director Heineman managed to get enormous access to Mireles and his Autodefensas, so much so that we finally discover things about this good doctor and loving family man that begin to call into question quite a lot. As usual, it appears that power corrupts, and the more powerful a man or group becomes, likewise the more corruptible.

Given what Heineman has chosen to show and tell us, we can't help but wonder what more damning tidbits he may have left out. Clearly, Mireles had control over what he allowed the director to see, hear, and maybe report on, so we wonder why we're discovering certain things but not some others. Ah, it's a conundrum, and the question of who is betraying who consistently crops up.

As for the American set of vigilantes, early on its leader explains that the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled his group "extremists" -- and than proceeds to unintentionally explain why this is true. While it is clear that the filmmaker wanted to show us vigilantes on both sides of the borders, it seemed to me that those on the American side were much less interesting or productive (but perhaps more trustworthy?) that those to the south.

As usual with these drug movies, any kind of understandable truth proves so elusive that the viewer's patience eventually wears thin. That's the point, I guess. Of course, "truth" is always problematic. But where Mexico, America and the drug cartels are concerned, it is so multi-layered and out of reach as to seem non-existent. And that, dear reader/viewer, is fucking depressing.

Cartel Land, distributed theatrically by The Orchard and running 100 minutes, is available for streaming now via Netflix and elsewhere. 

EL INFIERNO: Luis Estrada & Jaime Sampietro's black, comedic portrait of the state of Mexico

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EL INFIERNO (the title literally means hell, and the movie metaphorically takes us there) is a very long, straight-ahead tale of a middle-aged man named Benny (played by the well-known Mexican actor Damián Alcázar) who returns from the U.S. (he's been deported) to his little home-town in Mexico and begins to fit right into the completely sleazy, horrific, drug addled, greedy, murderous, lascivious life-style of the place. Even his old mom, who initially berates her son for never having written to her over the 20 years he was gone -- "We thought you were dead!" -- soon enough capitulates to the pricey gifts he offers her. In fact, she asks for more.

To anyone who remotely follows current and past Mexican history, none of this will come as a shock. The real surprise of the movie is how thuddingly obvious it is from first to last in presenting us this tale of an already venal and uncaring guy who becomes even more so when offered the least opportunity. The tone taken by Luis Estrada,(shown at right) the director /co-writer (with Jaime Sampietro), is one of only slight exaggeration, which produces the comedic sense, while the events parading in front of us quickly turn that comedy pitch black.

Alcázar (above and on poster top) is a very talented actor, here given little chance to shown his range or abilities. He's perfectly OK so far as he is allowed to go. But this is no great distance, and it's traversed in mostly baby steps. For a much better example of Mexican black comedy, see the terrific film Herod's Law (from 1999) to discover what Alcázar -- along with Estrada and Sampietro, who, with a couple of other writers, also made this movie -- can accomplish.

In that earlier film, they gave us something at once rich and strange, while also shocking and surprising. Here, perhaps in order to reach the lowest common denominator, they cross every "t" and dot each "i" -- resulting in a screenplay and finished movie that you can pretty much write-as-you-go. At one point, our "hero" asks his friend Cochiloco (Joaquín Cosio, above, right) "Aren't you afraid of going to hell?" Comes the reply: "Hell is right here." Ay -- profound!)

What Benny finds in his home-town is a dead brother, along with the brother's widow and son; his best friends now all working for the local drug lord; and only one person (his kindly godfather) remains free from the taint of Mexico's manure. (As to how this nice guy managed to avoid the smell, we're not made privy.)

As Benny negotiates his new role as "enforcer" for the drug cartel's main man (and his dysfunctional family), he thrives on its perks, while trying to retain his "humanity." Sure. Along the way we note the collaboration of the local police, the Church, politicians, and all else -- with betrayal, somewhere along the line, forever the name of the game.

There's a lot of violence here, though it barely begins to compare with Oliver Stone's Savages, to cite but one of our recent super-violent films. And because the tone is somewhat comic, that violence is somehow made easier to take, which is exactly the effect that it should not have. The darkly funny conclusion promises, undoubtedly correctly, that poor Mexico will continue to experience, down the generations, more (and more and more) of the same.

You can view El Infierno (known in some quarters as El Narco), running two hours and 29 minutes, on Netflix streaming, and you can also view Herod's Law (under its Spanish title, La ley de Herodes, on DVD, also from Netflix and/or other sources.

The Rosi/Bowden EL SICARIO, ROOM 164: Naughty "narco" tells all. Or some. Maybe.

Guaranteed -- were it to be seen and believed by many people -- to set Mexican tourism back a few billion dollars, EL SICARIO, ROOM 164 purports to be an interview with a fellow who was a prime killer for a Mexican drug car-tel. TrustMovies uses the word purports not because he necessarily doubts the veracity of the movie (though the film does build up to one whopper of a suspend-your-disbelief moment) but rather because we, the audience, must take an awful lot of what we hear (not to mention see, or in this case, don't-see) on faith, just as did, I suspect, the writer/director, Gianfranco Rosi (shown just below), and co-writer Charles Bowden, the journalist who wrote the original article that appeared in Harpers Magazine.

According to the documentary's U.S. distributor, Icarus Films, the definition of "sicario" dates back to Roman-conquered Palestine and to a Jewish terrorist sect, the Sicarii, who used daggers -- sicae -- in their murders of Romans and Roman supporters. The term, as used here, applies to a Ciudad Juárez hitman who claims to have killed hundreds of people and to be an expert in torture and kidnapping. On the payroll of the Mexican drug cartels at the same time as he was a commander of the Chihuahua State Police (what he tells us about the connection between these two "powers" is probably the most depressing thing in the movie), the fellow currently has a $250,000 bounty on his head and lives as a fugitive, though he has never been charged with a crime in any country. (Haven't most of the drug cartel members not been charged with any crimes? True, but they haven't snitched quite like this.)

Why did he snitch, you may wonder, as the film progresses? He will probably pay for this with his life, if not those of his family, too. (And when they get him/them, what will happen is most likely the very same horrors we've heard about from this guy over the course of the film.) To protect his identity, Sic (as we'll call him), shown above, wears all black plus a black, breathe-easy rag over his head. Unlike so many documentaries that make use of talking heads, this one offers a talking covered head. Because all we're really seeing is a black-covered figure, complete with voice and hands, since the voice could have been over-dubbed (and the figure itself might be an actor having memorized lines, in order to prevent ay identification from happening by our guy's former associates), identity is more than a little unclear.

Sic's hands, however, are plainly on view, and I would imagine that his former bosses are combing through any old photos they might possess to match 'em up. Sic generally holds a drawing pad in front of him, too, on which he diagrams some of the things he is explaining -- such as the power structure in Mexico, another tidbit that should depress the hell out of you and even more so out of the hope-free Mexican citizenry. Is there a more populous country on the globe any more corrupt than this one, I wonder? For all the "legit" news stories we read about the Mexican drug cartels, and their accompanying corruption, murders and massacres, probably the most memorable (certainly the darkest and funniest) comes from The Onion's September 20, 2010 issue (read it here.)

All there is, then (besides a very occasional -- and useless-- exterior shot, as below) is Sic talking and drawing, but since the talk is about crime and cartels, torture and murder (and the result of same to Sic's psyche), nothing proves uninteresting. And because the movie lasts but 84 minutes, including credits, it's a fast, ugly time. As might be expected, the details are where the true horror is found. Methods of torture, the repetitions, and the time a doctor had to be called to revive a comatose victim (and the irony of what happened afterward): Whether all this is creepier or crazier, I'll leave to your judgment.

It's when we get to the finale and how our man manages to "save" himself that our credibility is most severely tested. Granted Mexico's a Catholic country, and Sic must have come from the lower classes, the fact that Jesus would prove his savoir seems not too far afield. What rankles most is that the man who runs the Church in question appears to be a product of the same cartel and power structure as Sic himself. So how hard would it be for the nasty and powerful to put two and two together and find their canary?

There were moments toward the end when it occurred to me that I might be witnessing the Banksy of Mexico. If so, more power to the exercise. If not, and all this is gospel, then I hope that (1) Mexico will forgive me for spending my tourist dollars elsewhere and (2) Jesus will save the rest of those sicario shits before they kill off the remaining population.

El Sicario, Room 164 (which refers to the hotel room where the interview with Sic takes place, and/or maybe the room in which he committed those atrocities?), from Icarus Films, opens at Film Forum in New York City (and in time for the holiday season, too!) this Wednesday, December 28 -- for one week only. Check showtimes here. The film will also be coming to the Northwest Film Forum in Seattle in January, and to the Union Theater, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in February -- and elsewhere perhaps. Check this link later for possible additional playdates and cities.