Irresponsible in the way it depicts sicarios and drug war violence

Rating: 6/10 (22 September 2017)

This movie gets way too much hype for the fantasy that it actually is. The vast majority of murders and kidnappings in the Mexico cartel wars are carried out by males in their 20s and in mostly amateur fashion. The depiction of the Super Sicario here is pure Hollywood. The idea of a Super Sicario who expertly hunts down American agents and moves within their ranks is absolutely ridiculous. Also, the idea that there are delta force (type) raids and assassinations going on with U.S. military or covert assets is simply not accurate. When a Mexican cartel boss or lieutenant is brought down in real life, it's generally in boring fashion while they hide in a hotel room or get involved in a shootout with a rival cartel. Finally, illegal practices such as torture are glamorized and depicted as effective, when all real-world intel gathering professionals will tell you otherwise. Cross border tunnel raids in which dozens are killed is just the icing on the Hollywood cake.
In any case, this is obviously fiction and the film does try to depict the nebulous nature of the war on drugs near the U.S.-Mexico border. The story is taut and very well directed by Villeneuve. The film does not take a stand on one side or the other - the drug trade and all the violence that it entails, especially in the 2000's, is the direct result of American demand for the product. Further, the movie attempts to demonstrate that the volume of drugs passing through (or under) our border crossings simply would not be possible without massive corruption on both sides.
All in all I was disappointed because I am very familiar with the areas in which it was set and the U.S-Mexico dialectic concerning the war on (some) drugs and horrific cartel violence in Juarez, MX. I thought that while the direction was more than competent, it wasn't Villeneuve's best work and that Taylor Sheridan took way too much creative license and that the end result was a highly stylized flick that doesn't capture the boring and even more horrifying aspects of the situation in Mexico. I suppose my main problem with the movie, however, was the idea of a super assassin and that it depicts the U.S. as way more interested in what is going on down there than it actually is.