A few years ago David Ayer (now helming Suicide Squad) released End of Watch, a brutal Cops vs Cartels film starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena. It was a film you could easily dismiss at the time because of its contradictory nature; wanting to be a gritty, realistic crime drama with it’s found footage cinematography, while presenting Mexican drug lords as the most ostentatious, cartoon-like violent villains since Tony Montana. Though that film may be worth a reassessment, as Michael Heineman’s new documentary Cartel Land has made explicitly clear how psychopathic cartels can truly be.
Cartel Land holds no quarter when it comes to portraying the violence of Mexico’s drug wars. Severed heads litter city streets, both soldiers and innocent civilians endure gunfire and children are brought to hospital in dire need of care. If nothing else it shows that Heineman is a courageous director, taking first–hand accounts from not only the local militia groups but the criminals themselves. The film is bookended by two interviews with cartel members as they cook methamphetamine in the dead out night. Both are grim and tense sequences, the knowledge that the entire crew could be killed lingers over the proceedings.
One group known as the Knights Templars in particular, merely form the backdrop to the film’s subjects. Much like a force of nature the cartels are something unknowable and uncontrollable being confronted by two flawed but determined men. The first is Tim ‘Nailer’ Foley, a U.S. veteran living near the border to Mexico who begins a small paramilitary group to patrol the stretch of land known as Cocaine Alley. The second, and far more sympathetic, is ‘El Doctor’ Jose Mireles, a physician leading the citizens militia known as ‘Autodefensa’.
Heinenman’s attempts to draw parallels between the groups falls short, largely because of how much more investment Autodefensa has in the conflict. These are their homes they are defending, their friends and their families. When the largely unsympathetic Mexican government intervenes it feels like an assault on their own civilians. Thanks to Mireles’ resources it also feels like a much more procedural affair; well-organised and able to deliver real results.
It is also Mireles’s story that has a clear direction to it. Resisting the groups integration into the government partially out of fear of corruption but also out of ego. The control he exerts over Autodefensa, and his female admirers, is a point of pride for the slick, charismatic leader. To see it eventually fall apart feels organic and at times, even sad.
By comparison Nailer’s border patrol feels like a thinly-held together collection of former soldiers and gun enthusiasts driven by xenophobia. Their reconnoitres through the Arizona desert feel like mostly fruitless affairs whose only purpose is to occupy men whose skills have little other marketable use. It’s as troubling as any of the gang violence but unfortunately just doesn’t go anywhere.
The final interview with the cartel meth cooks feels like a chilling twist in the tale. Their faces hidden by bandana as they reveal that the money from their trade funds both the Mexican government and the Autodefensa. It’s the sad truth of the seemingly unending Drug Wars in Mexico; that it is cyclical self-sustaining. Both the Autodefensa and the Arizona Border Patrol largely exist for their own sake and to do so they need the cartels even as they fight them.
Cartel Land is not a fun watch but it is a compelling one. It has all the larger than life characters, gang violence and government corruption of a fictional crime drama made horribly tragic by its reality. It would perhaps have been better served by saving the U.S. based sequences for another film but it is a vitally important piece for those curious about the Mexican Drug Wars. The conflict in Central America is a tragic one that often does not get the exposure it should. Here’s hoping Cartel Land can change that.
