The Boundary Has Been Adjusted

Rating: 7/10 (2 October 2015)

"Waaaah why can't it be from the cool tough guy's point of view"
If this had been told from Alejandro's point of view the mystery and moral ambiguity that drives his character's role in the story would be gone. His story, at least from his perspective, is quite simple. It is a revenge story. Even if we hadn't already seen the "this person is going to get revenge but oooooh maybe revenge isn't all that healthy mmmmk bye now" tale already told many times before, having Alejandro be the protagonist would be sacrificing the much more layered and beautifully uncompromising questions that this film raises for the viewer that isn't scared to ignore them. Alejandro is the protagonist for one single sequence in this movie, and that sequence reveals everything about him that we need to know after our perception of him has been built up and warped gradually up to that pivotal point.
Alejandro exists as the bridge between the two different takes on ethics this film presents with the characters of Kate and Matt. Want to find out which side you ultimately agree with? That is why Alejandro's true nature is revealed so slowly. I found myself agreeing with Matt in his view of compromising by-the-book methods for the greater good, at the very least when there's no other choice. However by the end of the film, I ended up mirroring Kate's mentality much more. Alejandro himself of course is more about priorities than ethics, and he is very sure about his priorities. Where Training Day presents a similar unraveling, this film doesn't compromise the difficulty of the protagonist's position by giving them lucky circumstances to provide an easy answer in the end. On the contrary, this makes Zero Dark Thirty look like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
"Waaaah Kate doesn't do anything and it's slow and nothing happens"
Tipping the action/non-action ratio of this film in the action direction would not only ruin the film's marvelously well-crafted structure, but also its merciless atmosphere. Kate could be kicking ass every five seconds but that wouldn't mean she's actually "doing anything" any more than her having little to no participation in the action after the first sequence means that she's not doing anything. You see there's this element of most sentient life that isn't physical, but is in fact referred to as "mental", and sometimes, just sometimes, that's where the action is happening. It is quite slow however, and the final scene even echoes Antonioni. Wait, why does "slow" have a negative connotation again?
Take lessons, other movies. Seize your opportunities.
This film has two nightmares in it. The first is Alejandro's on the jet. We hear the end of it rather vividly but we don't see it; only him waking up in horror, before quickly putting his mask back on. The second is Kate's...awake, at the bar. This is her first attempt at relaxing since the day began so naturally the memories of what she has just seen are going to try and stop her. Again we just get the audio of her horror and this time it's quieter and much less distinguishable from the natural background noise, which provides a beautiful subtle contrast to Kate's breaking soul and Alejandro's broken soul. Another example is when Kate and Alejandro pass under the bridge and witness bodies hanging from it. Alejandro's "Welcome to Juarez" line precedes this traumatic image rather than following it, a move which elevates both the line and the image. And as soon as the bodies are out of Kate's sight, the stark silence quickly fades out as she returns to reality enough to hear the noises of the moving vehicle. This is the kind of editing that separates great films from shallow films.
You can say you dislike this, but you're kidding yourself if you think it's a bad film. This is the uncompromising execution of cinema that stays with you well after you've finished watching it, provided you're not too sore that its advertising tricked you into thinking it was just another movie for you to forget about and defecate like a happy meal.