Observing the consequences of the Mexican drug trade on both sides of the U.S. border, Cartel Land toggles between Arizona and the state of Michoacan, about 1,000 miles to the south. Only the latter of the twinned storylines really pays off, but that one is riveting.
Up north, director Matthew Heineman and cinematographer Matt Porwoll follow Tim “Nailer” Foley, a military veteran who decided to secure the Arizona border. In part, this is a personal reclamation project. Nailer became a vigilante after kicking his addiction to booze and drugs and losing his construction job in the 2008 maxi-recession.
Nailer and his ad hoc troops are sincere, it seems, about wanting to protect their neighbors from Mexican thugs. But they’re also instinctively anti-immigrant. (One Arizona vigilante considers any Mexican migrant who already speaks English a major villain, even after a hapless guy explains that he just picked up the lingo while working in a Cancun hotel.) If all illegal drugs stopped crossing the border, Nailer’s men would not consider the battle won.
Further south, Michoacan’s residents don’t have to don night-vision goggles and patrol empty desert to locate narco-gangsters. They’re everywhere in the impoverished state, which under more peaceful circumstances might be best known for its lime and avocado crops.
When the filmmakers arrive, the region is dominated by the Knights Templar, a murderous mob whose name alone indicates the muddled iconography of cartel-dominated territory. They have come to think of themselves as defenders of the faith, even as they expand from drugs to kidnapping and protection rackets.