Cartel Land

Cartel Land (15)

USA 2015 100 mins Dir: Matthew Heineman

In an al fresco Mexican meth lab, the philosophising cooks reveal that they were taught their trade by a father and son from north of the border. “Those fuckers studied chemistry,” says one, with what we might safely assume is a smirk beneath his mask. It’s an early signal that Matthew Heineman’s impressive documentary is going to trade in ambiguity and shades of grey. A minority of reviewers have been disappointed that Heineman chooses not to editorialise about the ‘war on drugs’, the morality of vigilantism, and politics on both sides of the porous border. But this is the film’s great strength. There’s no narrator telling us what to think and, unlike certain other documentarians, Heineman never appears on camera to brag about how brave he’s being – though he and his team certainly have mighty cojones when it comes to capturing gangland shootouts and gunpoint interrogations.

Cartel Land – or “the real-life Breaking Bad“, if you must – alternates between two vigilante groups on opposite sides of the border, each of which are filling a law’n’order vacuum left by their respective governments. At first glance, the least appealing of these is the self-styled Arizona Border Recon, led by gnarly, righteous militia type Tim ‘Nailer’ Foley – a recovering meth addict himself, who whines that vigilantes have been given a bad name by the dastardly media. His organisation is nobly dedicated to preventing cartel “dirtbags” plying their evil trade north of the border, though Mr. Nailer’s guard drops when he starts to enjoy his platform so much that he ventures into racial politics: “You wouldn’t put two pitbulls in the same pen and expect them to get along and not fight. Why would you put two races in the same nation and expect them to get along?” he demands, rhetorically. Before long, the indignant vigilante’s organisation is labelled a hate group.

More complicated is the Autodefensas of Michoacan, led by charismatic, silvery-haired doctor Jose Manuel Mireles, who sports a cowboy hat and an impressively luxuriant Sam Elliott moustache, and is the kind of macho Latin American people’s hero one might expect the likes of Oliver Stone to swoon over. Mireles brandishes a smartphone on which he has a photograph of the severed heads of his neighbours. We also hear the grisly tale of a farmer who couldn’t pay his debt to a cartel, so they gunned down 13 of his innocent workers and their families, smashing babies’ heads against rocks and dumping all the corpses in a well. Mireles argues persuasively that he knew he’d be next unless he took up arms against the amusingly named Knights Templar drug gang, who may or may not be Dan Brown enthusiasts in their spare time. Before long, this Mexican Clint Eastwood figure’s Autodefensas movement has won huge public support and hordes of eager recruits. But as they sweep through towns rooting out alleged gang members, empowerment quickly begins to look like mob rule. Heineman captures the unwary Mireles ordering an execution and, queasily, attempting to seduce a young female groupie. After he’s injured in a plane crash, the organisation’s bumbling interim leader, who goes by the name of Papa Smurf, finds himself shouted down at a village meeting by articulate ingrates who don’t want his brand of unaccountable ‘protection’.

Tellingly, the relaxed cartels remain confident of the power of corruption. The revelatory closing interview suggests they are not mistaken and it’ll be business as usual south of the border for the foreseeable future.