WATCH THE TRAILER HERE
First, the Recap:
In over one’s head. Yet one more scenario we would preferably choose to avoid at all costs, not wanting to feel the uneasy pressure of being among others who have knowledge we don’t possess and a plan far above our initial understanding. Kidnapping specialist and Phoenix, AZ FBI S.W.A.T. member Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) just had a successful, but ultimately horrifying, experience discovering the contents within a residential home during a local raid. With the connection made to Mexican drug cartels beginning to infiltrate normal neighborhoods, her accomplishments attract the attention of her boss, Dave Jennings (Victor Garber), who introduces Kate to Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), a secretive government-type wanting to recruit her for a multi-agency task force aiding in the war against drugs at the U.S./Mexico border.
Initially hesitant, Macer volunteers for the mission and suddenly finds her idealistic viewpoints and very life placed in serious risk as it soon becomes apparent Graver and his equally enigmatic partner Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro) have more than one agenda in mind. Embarking on the first step of the greater mission that paints a savage and grim illustration of the world she’s just become a part of, Macer truly begins to realize that all is not well, that unholy alliances have been formed for a “greater good”, and that the realities of the drug war and two of its primary players, Manuel Diaz (Bernardo P. Saracino) and Fausto Alarcon (Julio Cedillo), are in the center of Graver and Alejandro’s crosshairs. A bigger picture then unfolds, revealing the costs and collateral damage involved in a shadowy war where so much is not what it seems.
Next, my Mind:
For those possibly thinking that this film is some new non-stop action fest, turn away now. IS there action? Absolutely, but truly in the context of illustrating the hard-driving, sobering, and often brutally visceral conflicts that are involved when dealing with the perilous paths traveled by elite task forces in the war against Mexican cartels. Director Denis Villeneuve brings about, in total, a more character-driven effort here in telling Macer’s story and the WAY in-over-her-head agenda she becomes a part of, how she deals with it, and the cost that it finally pays out to everyone touched by its aims. A seriously well done, but eerily unsettling, sequence at the U.S/Mexico border in the film’s first act is a harbinger of what’s to come, and gives Macer a first glimpse of what she’s immersed in.
Blunt is such an find for this role, as she so convincingly portrays the internal conflicts that Macer is experiencing as the mission reels out of her understanding and ethical boundaries, unable to get straight answers, and being taught serious lessons about the cartels and the U.S. involvement in stopping them. Brolin excels as the cocky mission leader, just exuding that arrogance, wearing it like a badge of know-it-all honor. And Del Toro’s Alejandro is simply a prime character for him to play, able to give the character that required sense of intelligence, calmness, yet always lurking lethality, making Alejandro’s intimidation factor go through the roof.
Riddled with hard language and sporadic but blunt violence, this modern “Traffic” still delivers one compelling and forceful statement, even in fictional form, about the price that most likely is paid in the real life war against drugs.
