Jay Carr c. But it also reminds us why until recent times despair was considered a sin. That being said, the film is exciting to watch because Benicio Del Toro's Mexican narc and Don Cheadle's US counterpart are tough and tenacious and capable of putting a dent in the operations of druglords on both sides of the border. It's the druglords who command the large imperial armies hitherto assumed by Hollywood to be the exclusive role of the G-men Hollywood helped mythologize.
Street smarts are no small part of the equipment in the kits of the straight cops.
The film is not despairing, but, unlike the usual Hollywood fantasy, it is soberingly realistic about the odds and the dimensions of the problem. Its visual dynamism does a lot to sidestep what could easily seem like genre cliches. A visit to the Mexican-US border opens his eyes to the fact that he's being flanked and outnumbered by the drug cartels. Of more immediate impact is his belated realization that drugs have made their way into his own family. He mostly lurches around in a daze, as if trying to awaken from a bad dream.