One Character Away from Being a Great Film

Rating: 9/10 (20 December 2015)

In this case the character was the star of the movie. Ditch Emily Blunt and it's a great thriller.
I'm not much of a fan of movies these days as episodic television series have usurped the entertainment role formerly held by features, at least how I see things. I didn't expect to like this movie at all but I didn't allow my negative preconceptions to get in the way of enjoying the heck out of most of the film. The scenes were mostly brilliant and everything you should expect from a big-budget Hollywood thriller. The long sequence of the SUV convoy into very hostile Juárez territory ranks right up there with any action scene ever. I found myself staring in amazement at many shots in the film: a desert sky at night, ominous clouds on the horizon, drone shots of a barren landscape, and many more. A visual masterpiece! It's too bad this movie wasn't made into a series instead as its two hour runtime just wasn't nearly enough to tell this complex story. The characters played by Benicio del Toro and Brolin were only vague hints of what they could have been given a lot more time. The Mexican cop, Silvio, took up way too much screen-time whereas in a series his part could have been a great sideline instead of the distraction it was in the feature. His first scene clocked in a less than two minutes yet it seemed way too long for me.
The characters of Emily Blunt and her partner were almost completely superfluous to the story. Remove both of them and the plot would barely have missed a beat. She is little more than a pawn in the story yet much of the focus was on her.
When Alejandro talks about the boss of bosses in Mexico he says, "To find him would be like discovering a vaccine." He is 100% right so why is she so hostile to their operation? Why does she continue if she is so opposed to it? I never understood this aspect of her character and for me it took away a bit of believability for the story. Her boss asked her if she thought they were winning the drug war even though they had prosecuted more felony drug cases in the past year than in the two previous years. This was a question a reporter put to the "Drug Czar" William Bennet during his time in that post in the 1980s. He stuttered and stammered but was unable to give a coherent answer. We aren't winning and she knows it as well as anyone. So why isn't she on board? If she isn't on board what does she propose?