Inhuman traffic
Drugs-war thriller packs Blunt force trauma...
SICA RIO 15
OUT NOW DVD, BD, DIGITAL HD
The idea of ‘crossing the line’ dominates Denis Villeneuve’s taut, pounding war-on-drugs thriller, in the way that the desert-snaking US -Mexico border fence looms in its stunning aerial landscapes. Showing off his Prisoners- honed gift for tense setpieces, Villeneuve even stages his sweatiest shoot-out sequence in a Bridge Of The Americas border traffic jam (there’s a crafty mock-up explanation in the extras).
In this access-all-areas package, he and screenwriter Taylor Sheridan show their painstaking construction of the white-knuckle ride from legit to lawless taken by Emily Blunt’s upstanding FBI agent Kate Macer when a ‘black ops’ government task force enlists her. From the grabby Arizona house-of-body-horrors raid that blows the story open, Sheridan’s take-no-prisoners script uses Kate’s idealism and Blunt’s raw-edged nervy POV to make us gawp at the horrors (and sheer scale) of the US war on drug trafficking.
Granted, the film goes long and strong on the shock tactics of Josh Brolin’s Delta Force crew and Benicio Del Toro’s mysterious enforcer Alejandro (not least a tyre-squealing Mexican prison grab). Unlike Soderbergh’s 360-degree take on the drugs trade in Traffic, it’s uninterested in whether an ends-justifies-the-means militarised war on trafficking is right or wrong. Instead there’s a Zero Dark Thirty- ish concentration on the immoral tactics (kidnap, torture, dangerous coalitions) that law enforcement ends up resorting to in terrifyingly rule-free zones.
Ballsy, gun-and-run filmmaking predominates, even when the story swerves unnervingly off-piste late on. But Del Toro’s understated, dead-soul performance (cinematographer Roger Deakins detects the mournful strength of Robert Mitchum in him) carries it off. But the real star is found in Deakins’ extraordinary visual artistry. His melding of light and dark – brutally bright Mexico streets, an ingenious infra-red night tunnel raid – give the borderlands crackling atmosphere. Paired with Jóhann Jóhannsson’s ominous, pulsing score, it makes the landscape the cruellest character on screen.
Extras › Featurettes (BD)