The most confusing is our protagonist, the female special police officer played by Emily Blunt. This role seems to be positioned as the role of Judy Foster in "The Silent Lambs", who is timid but has to face the unknown horror. After an anti-drug operation, she was called into a government-sponsored action team. This is an organization full of confusing and mysterious characters. One of them is her team leader Matt. We don’t know where he comes from. The other is Mexican Alessandro. What exactly is his position? From the beginning, the director limited the information that the audience knew to the level of the female special police. As a suspenseful film, the opening scene was exciting enough. But looking at the film’s narrative, the female special police officer was portrayed as an idealist who faithfully believes in justice and law from the beginning to the end. The character’s emotional linear development is almost zero, and she is unaware of all actions. In the end, she was almost ignorant. Love also lost her life, the existence value of this role is not very high. The atmosphere of the film is very similar to Catherine Bigelow’s "Assassination of Osama Bin Laden". It successfully created a female image with firm beliefs. At the beginning of the film, I thought this character would rely on the role played by Chastain. . But when she was pinched around her neck and almost dead, compared with the image of the Valkyrie that Emily Blunt previously portrayed in "Edge of Tomorrow", she always felt something was wrong.
The film also sets up another clue, it is an ordinary Mexican family, the father of this family is a policeman, the children often hope that their father will play football with him. For most of the film, the director did not reveal how this clue had anything to do with our anti-drug main line. Of course, we learned in the end that the director seemed to want to create suspense here and leave a burden, but this suspense was really not very successful, because the audience’s attention was focused on anti-narcotics, and the family’s parallel editing was set too early. In addition, this clue is about the impact of drugs on Mexican families. It is very similar to the narrative effect of the Mexican film "Hurley". It stimulates sympathy through violence. Some fans think this is a sublimation of the theme of the film, but I think this is related to The theme of the film is completely out of touch.
The theme of the film is still about the difference between the United States and Mexico. This theme seems to have a sense of superiority in the United States, because after crossing the border of El Paso, everything is chaotic and terrifying. From the perspective of the female SWAT, We saw corpses hanging on the bridge; even comrades in arms would tease that gun battles between drug lords were staged like fireworks every day. Alessandro, a key figure, will emphasize that the American way of doing things does not work in Mexico. This theme reminds me of "Underworld 2". Hong Kong people must follow the rules of the mainland when doing business in the mainland, and the relationship between the United States and Mexico is also the same. The final climax belongs to the Mexicans, using violence to control violence. But during the climax, the protagonist suddenly changed. This is too strange in the movie narrative. I can't help asking, where is our Valkyrie?
However, the film did provide enough articles on the atmosphere, especially the scene of the traffic jam. We observed from the perspective of the female SWAT who didn’t know anything. There were suspected enemies on all sides, and the formation between the U.S. military and the suspects. This is similar to the balance wrestling of Hong Kong films. In addition, Roger Dickins has several great aerial shots of the bleak desert, plus several subjective shots taken with infrared or even night vision goggles. This kind of atmosphere similar to first-person shooting is truly unprecedented in the field of movies. Although the well-known film critic AO Scott criticized "the film seems to be just showing off the shooting technique", this kind of cool and documentary photography extracts the best and most suspenseful parts from unsuccessful dramas. Visually, it can be described as refined.
Perhaps from the perspective of a Chinese, I really don't know where to talk about the drug-related relationship between the United States and Mexico. The severity of the drug problem in the southern United States is fully revealed in this film. Recently, Netflix launched a new series "Drug Lord", which has an extraordinary reputation. If you are interested, you can compare this film and the series to watch, and you may get a deeper understanding of the sensationalism of Mexico's drug economy.
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