Remember when western governments went through their phases of appointing a “czar” for everything? They clearly didn’t recall just what happened to the last one of them, and to be fair to “Wakefield” (Michael Douglas) his chances of success trying to stop the trafficking of drugs from Mexico to the USA wasn’t much likelier to succeed. In many ways the application of this task is little better than an honour amongst thieves arrangement with his own DEA officers trying to take down the “Ayala” cartel whilst south of the Rio Grande, law enforcement has rules that are more akin to survival of the fittest. They do make a semblance of a breakthrough, though, when they manage to arrest “Carlos Ayala” (Steven Bauer) thanks to some sterling work from “Gordon” (Don Cheadle) and “Castro” (Luis Guzmán). What they haven’t quite bargained on, though, is that his hitherto largely unaware wife “Helena” (Catherine Zeta Jones) is determined to avoid ending up on skid-row with her son, and so decides to take up some of the slack in her husband’s nefarious business enterprise. Meantime, different methods are proving effective for “Rodriguez” (Benicio Del Toro) and his partner “Sanchez” (Jacob Vargas) who are just as unscrupulous when it comes to tracking down these culprits and their mules, and after some success find themselves embroiled in a much more perilous endeavour to bring down the kingpin of the “Obregon” organisation. What doesn’t exactly help the new American boss is that his teenage daughter “Caroline” (Erika Christensen) spends a fair amount of her time stoked up with her boyfriend (Topher Grace) and their posh mates, sniffing or snorting whatever they can get hold of in their money-no-object, country club, lives and when that news leaks out, his own position might need him to start thinking about that second letter he had been warned to write. As the nets all begin to tighten, much hinges on the testimony of the dealer “Ruíz” (Miguel Ferrer) who has been promised immunity if he spills the beans, but - well, let’s just say that “Mrs. Ayala” wants her husband back. Rather than take a broad-brush approach to the national level of the politicking here, this works better because it focuses more on the people on the ground who are routinely making and breaking the rules to stay one step ahead of people who have ten times the budgets, the resources and the guile to ensure that for every one that are caught, another nine get through. Though I didn’t love the sometimes quite amateur-looking photography, and I felt the score frequently quite obtrusive, Del Toro is on great form exuding well the attitude of a pragmatic officer who has standards and red lines, but they can conveniently blur from time to time. Ferrer is also effective as the creepy snitch and the gradual incorporation of the threads into a single denouement works well in providing clear evidence that such a single conclusion isn’t ever going to realistically possible! Luckily, Douglas isn’t used so much because he’s pretty hopeless, but just about everyone else works well delivering a gritty dramatisation of what it could be like for the narcotics equivalent of King Canute.
