Deans represent. A clear and present danger.
National security of the United States.
Hello and welcome to season 2, episode 4 of Clear and Present
Dudes. I'm Mike Zumbar.
This is the podcast that reminds you that this is a land of
wolves and you are not a wolf. And I'm here with Rory, James
O'Toole and Sonya Bjorkson. Hello, welcome.
OK, so we are covering, of course, tonight the movie
Sicario from 2015, directed by Denny Villeneuve, starring Emily
Blunt. A couple of announcements before
we get cracking. So standard stuff, please like
and subscribe and follow on Spotify whether you hold your
podcasts dear and also check us out on YouTube if the will takes
you. Also, happy birthday to Emily
Blunt, whose birthday it is today.
Part of the reason why we're doing this movie.
And then finally, a little clear, Imprisoned Dudes tribute
to the life of 1 Mr Robert Duvall, who suddenly passed away
this week as we are recording today is the 17th of Feb 2026.
Just to want to say a little word.
I've seen a lot of tributes online about his work on The
Godfather and Lonesome Dove. A lot of stuff for Falling Down
actually, which is pretty cool. I want to give a little clear in
Prison dude a tribute for his work in Jack Reacher, also 2015,
I think, where he kind of reignited his Tom Cruise, Robert
Duvall mentor mentee relationship, which he kind of
did in Days of Thunder back in 1989.
So awesome film. But yeah, guys, take it away.
Do you have any words to say about old Robert Duvall?
What a performer. What a guy.
Again, Godfather. He was just absolutely
captivating. He's he's done so much.
He was absolutely tremendous. He was an absolute Titan on the
screen as performs in Apocalypse now was just on the cusp of
unhinged yet believable as a really, really little war
fighter, right. You know, loved it.
How many Oscars did the guy guess he got best actor.
He got the British Academy Film Award who primed him Emmys 4
Golden Globes, the Screen Act as Guild Award and he was nominated
for fucking Tonnes Tonnes, Best Actor on support and Rule for
Godfather, Best actor on support and rule for Apocalypse Now,
Best actor on leading role for The Great Santini again, Tender
Mercies at the Apostles, Civil Action and Best actor on support
and role for The Judge in 2014. The guy just kept kept stacking
up the accolades, stacking up the stacking up the nominations.
What a guy you know. Yeah, wonderful.
Also got the the National Defence Service Medal and was a
private first class in the US Army.
That's right. So a clear imprisoned dude.
All of that tied to the rifled age of 95.
We'll be covering some of his films almost certainly in in the
near future, but. I mean, I mean, seriously, just
pulling one out of thin air? How about assassination Tango?
I've never heard of it mate, but it sounds 2. 1002 American crime
thriller film written, produced and directed by and starring
Robert Duvalle. I literally just pulled this out
of thin air and this sounds really good.
Anderson Duvalle is a successful American hitman whose employer
sends him to do a job in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
His contacts inform him that his target is a former general who
took part in Argentina's last military dictatorship following
a phone call from the court experiment.
As Anderson learns his job as late, he was targeted to see an
injury in a riding accident. Angry and frustrated that he's
stuck in Argentina to targets required from accident, he walks
the street and he has music behind a red curtain.
He finds it. Behind the red curtain is a
beautiful woman gracefully dancing the tango with a man.
I'm not going to say anything else because we'll probably
spoil this film later on while on a podcast that this sounds
really fucking good. Dead over less.
Yes. Awesome, right?
Should we talk about Sicario? So here for one Apartment is
pulling an agent that specialises in cartel activity.
You'll be part of the team. What's our objective?
To dramatically overreact. We're not American.
Who do you work for now? I go where I'm sent.
Welcome to water. Yes, Sicario is the 2015
American action crime thriller film directed by Denny
Villeneuve, written by Taylor Sheridan.
That's Taylor Sheridan of Yellowstone, Landman, Tulsa
Kings, All that stuff. Starring Emily Blunt, Benicio
Del Toro, Joshua Brolin, and Daniel Kalia as well why I'm
going to deviate from the the Wikipedia summary here.
The film follows A principled FBI special agent.
There is very little evidence of her being principled in the
film, who was enlisted by a government task force to bring
down a leader of a powerful and brutal Mexican drug cartel.
Sakari received praise for its cast, performances, writing,
direction, musical score and cinematography.
Yeah. So we're going to touch upon
quite a lot on this is Roger Deakins as the as the
cinematographer on this film. He is God's tier
cinematographer. On the 7th day, God said that
they'd be light. And Roger Deakins said, wait, on
my cue. Then Johan Johansson starting to
log over with us as the composer on this film would also work
again with Denny Villeneuve the following year on Arrival.
Tremendous Film has one sequel, Sicario Day of the Soldado or
Sicario Soldado depending on which region you're in.
Saldado just means Soldier which was directed by Stefano Salima
and Tradition 2018. A third film may be in
development. Taylor Sheridan has written them
both. Also, Taylor Sheridan wrote a
brilliant film called Hell or High Water.
So going from that particular bone, I will say opening opinion
here. This is my hottest take about
Sicario. As beautiful as this film looks,
I think writing wise it's a little bit of a leaky bathtub.
And by that I mean Taylor Sheridan has a very particular
style which I think is incompatible with Dennyville.
Nerves focus in this film and the two things are pulling at
each other, I think. But we'll say that before we get
into the movie, guys. What are your opinions of
Sicario? That's Sanya go first.
Sam Wallace, one of us in of my opinion first.
So Sanya, you're a man. You're 1st through the door.
You're making me point man, knowing full well that that Jobs
is that guy's job is just going in to die first.
Roll one, blow one, son. Yeah, get in. 4-5 hang gauge,
right? So I've got to say kind of in
some way banger of a film really previously, mostly come across
it like short videos that you'll find everywhere on social media.
Laugh. The soundtrack really,
absolutely goes hard, really does make you sort of wary of
accountant looking types in chequered shirts because no
thank you. But yeah, it it sort of gives
you a feeling of slight unease throughout.
You can can watch it and go sort of.
It's a weird crossover between these guys absolutely do fuck
and these guys should nowhere be near where they are right now
and they shouldn't be absolutely not doing what they are doing.
And given, given the current political climate, that has been
a particularly fun watch. I see seeing US three letter
agencies doing things in countries where they're not
supposed to be. So that was another layer that I
really hadn't had in mind when I started watching it.
And I just sat there like, OK, so that's what they don't.
I think, I think we're we're both pulling up the same thing
here where I think Denny Villeneuve as the director and
probably the producers and stuff as well had a political opinion.
But what was going on in the film, and I'm not sure the
writer of the film, Taylor Sheridan, shared that opinion.
So you've got something that's on paper kind of a little bit
jingoistic and maybe doesn't necessarily see all of what's
wrong with what's going on. But the film makers, in adapting
it at the screenplay, I've kind of turned on his head a little
bit. And through the character of of
Kate, through Emily Blunt, we are seeing the moral depravity
of what's going on. Whereas I think I think my
humble opinion until he showed his mind, the story is actually
just about how Kay is innocent and wide eyed and push your
tails and she gets broken down and sees that she's not ready to
deal with these people. But it's not like a moral
problem. It's just a you've come out this
white woman like like emphasis on the woman coming in here into
this boys game and you have been schooled by all the big hard
boys and you are not ready to you.
You don't play with us werewolves, your sheep.
But actually I think what Denny Villeneuve is saying is this
person has something like a script of A and what is
happening is morally repugnant. And that's how she doesn't fit
in because she can't get on their level.
She's 2 principals. It's not support in the text.
I don't think of the screenplay. But that's the that's the
conflict I'm I'm sensing between like the the friction between
what Denny Villeneuve wants to make as a as a director of film
and what Taylor Sheridan has put on the page as a guy who likes
writing films about cunts. Writing films about cunts is
actually a fantastic line. I'm glad you're the first one to
throw a really bad swear word in the mix tonight.
Mike, thank you so much. Full Sandman.
Full sand grip it and RIP it. So I've seen I've just seen now
where till I Sharon referred was the anti walk king of Hollywood
by commentary magazine. And I'm not going to bother
reading this this article because it's big and wasn't I
wasn't paid to read. In fact, I wasn't paid anything
at all for this show. But I think it definitely honest
when like it seems like this film was kind of born out of
partially out of that kind of conflicts between ideologies
that are at work within the people who were making this
because they created like it's created out of has its its its
qualities from the tension and the disconnect between
Villeneuve and between Taylor Sheridan and between some of
just the general vibe, the general story of the film.
It's like, I heard that I haven't seen the sequel because
I, I ain't got time man, Time's money and I've got none.
But I've heard the sequel says essentially kind of Taylor
Sheridan does it again, But this time the three letter agencies
are definitely 100% the good guys, right?
That's yeah, that's pretty much it.
Yeah. So, so in this film is very much
the antagonists, the people, because, because we don't really
get very much interaction with the cartel at all.
So our antagonists, if we're calling Kate, the protagonist is
Josh Gordon's character. I think his name is Matt.
Yeah. And Benicio del Toro's
character. Yeah.
Alejandro, Benicio del Toro's character.
And then they are like, on the poster, back-to-back, like a
romantic comedy leads. Yeah.
For for the for the sequel. Like, they.
They're the guys who do no wrong.
But the story is just as murky. They're going into Mexico to
start a war between two cartels to create more.
Cool, cool. The the the the Mexican bad guys
in in the film, he could be entirely removed from the film
and he'd still have the conflict between between I said as
between Matt Alejandro and and our our heroine, of course, who
you're righteous, like kind of seen as our skill issue.
You're a you're a you're a girl kind of thing.
You're a pussy. But she is like seeing all the
moral horror that I think maybe might not have been in the way
Taylor Sharon wrote it, because then he kind of goes on.
The right can basically rework it with less moral complexity,
right? I mean.
Yeah, so exactly, exactly that. And I think if you look at the
rest of Sheridan's output, I like enough to watch it again.
I really liked Helen High Water, which is the film I talked about
a few weeks ago where Chris Pine goes full scumbag mode as a bank
robber. And it's and it's that is
generally a very good film, but it falls into the same trap as
every Taylor Sheridan piece of metre is, which is Tiller showed
and decides ahead of time who his characters are that he
decrees to be the cool people. And then to remind us all that
they're very cool. He will give them like a badass
speech or three regular outputs. And everyone's really loquacious
and everyone's just like really abrasive and everyone's like,
it's horrible people being horrible to other horrible
people, but that they're actually kind of portrayed to
us. They're meant to be like
badasses who are cool and it's aspirational.
So like if you watch like Yellowstone, Yellowstone is a it
is a show about the friggin the best thing that America has
towards like the landed Gentry, right?
It's a giant ranch owner in Montana.
The guy's obscenely rich, but we're met a root for John
Dutton. But Kevin Costner's character
and his family, they're all obscenely rich people.
They're all terrible. They can they commit like 3
murders an episode, but women are back them up.
And like his daughter Beth Dutton is like a terrible human
being. But again, women are like back
her up like Oh yeah, she's just like making some horrible speech
about how smart she is and how shit they are.
She's starting fights and all that kind of stuff.
And it's like, yeah, I guess she's really cool.
She's a really good like female role model as a strong
independent woman. And so I can absolutely broke
ass. So it's because I've watched
like three seasons of Yellowstone and like the two
prequel movies. I just realised Sandy's put a
fucking cowboy hat on while I wasn't looking.
Yeah, I didn't. I didn't.
I didn't want to say anything
because audio medium straight away, but it's going to work.
Yeah, I was going to work. For those of us doing this
theatre of the mind and not watching the video, Sandy is
just put a fucking cowboy hat on.
I'm going to take someone to the train station.
You look like the you look like the guys in charge of the ranch.
Cole Hauser. Jesus Christ, you're.
Going to get in my oversized lift truck and and put some
bodies into the nearby Canyon. And like, that's and like, right
here's the thing, like. Roughly every 5 minutes per.
Episode yeah, but Yellowstone right, it paints itself as it's
like hard hitting drama. My dad got really into it.
It's like Dad TV if you, if you, yeah, if you peel away the top
layer of it, it's a soap opera, right?
It's fucking Dallas. It's not like it's like a hard
hit and drama where we actually get to the core of important
philosophy issues of our time. It's just rich people messing
around and look at the big ranch, look at the mountains.
How cool. It's on Abbey for rednecks.
It's time for rednecks. Yeah, perfect, absolutely ideal.
So that's so I take that is like my entry point to Sicario now.
And I think that's what's the big differences from when I
first watched the movie in 2015, when I was kind of like similar
to like other films that Roger Deakins a shot a bolder vote by
the imagery, bullet by the soundtrack, bullet by the
direction in the editing. And it has to be said, there are
sequences in this film that are electrifying.
Like if you were looking at it as a as a pure like thriller
movie action head. There are some there's some top
tier stuff here. We'll get onto it.
But the border crossing sequence is obviously going to stand the
test of time is like one of the most thrilling short.
Like it's a it's a car chase where normal cars move and it's
and it's a it's fascinating and it's probably like a piece of
like God tier editing that that that pulls that together.
But I'm going to say one more time, any roses movies gets,
they don't belong to Taylor Chariton.
He probably wrote a screenplay that tries his very best to make
this into a bad film. Though what's really funny is
that Taylor Sharon has actually gone on record and saying that
the amount of the amount of expositional dialogue you read
for television as an actor causing the form, quote unquote,
an allergy to exposition in his writing, it doesn't sound like
it has it. And bullshit on that.
One bit of trivia I did read about this movie was that Denny
Villeneuve and Benicio Del Toro were together removed about 90%
of Alejandro's dialogue because most of it was exposition that
the root of the mystery of the character.
It really does work very well because Kitty, I can imagine
right in the first script before, before Denny Villeneuve
got the knives out for it. I've been a hello, my name is
Alejandro. I used to be a lawyer.
The cartels cut my wife's head off and throw my daughter in a
VAT of acid. And it's like that revelation is
powerful when it comes at the end of the film.
But you can just you can just tell the revelation would have
been much earlier, like probably, probably on that
private plane. When?
Exactly.
I was thinking you'd be like she, she would have been like,
what's your specialty? And then he would have been
like, you've heard of a melanin, A Medellin.
And it's like, it's a, it's a guy who brings order out of the
chaos. And she'd be like, you're not
American, are you? And he'd go, no, I'm Colombian.
And then. And then I'd be like, all right,
fuck me, yeah. Yeah, and then he'd like and
look, here is my daughter, and here's another picture of her
going into the VAT of acid. He has, he has, he has, he has,
he has LiveLeak. He has a video of my wife being
decapitated by the cartels. So rather the point the podcast
already I'm angry about something that hasn't happened,
which is invalidating my previous argument, which is
perfectly justified. Yeah, so we're just going to sit
here making up a guy to get angry at?
Yeah, right. Plot synopsis.
Yes, there are images from this one I want to talk about.
And to do that, we have to get through our meat and potatoes in
Chandler, AZ. FBI Special Agents Kate Mesa and
that's Emily Blunt and Reggie Wayne that's Daniel Kalua leads
a raid on a Sonora cartel safe house where they discovered
dozens of decaying corpses hidden in the walls outside an
explosive booby trap kills 2 police officers and then
following the raid Kate is recommended for and joins a
joint task force overseen by spoiler spoiler spoiler we'll
stop there. So I think believe that in
having read exactly 2 screen writing books, but your opening
image of your movie and your closing image of your movie
should be in conversation with each other.
And we'll cover that when we get to it.
But the opening images movie is like a shot of residential
suburb outside of Chandler, AZ It little boxes on the hillside,
little boxes made of tiki tack and cresting, cresting.
The cresting the hill is like a bunch of tactical FBI agents all
wearing their tactical gear carrying rifles or whatever
they're cut. Yeah, that's rifles.
And as they swarm over and enter this, this residential
neighbourhood, organised assaults by a bunch of people
working as a team, all wearing their rig, all carrying their
weapons and their protection. Emboldened they are by their
their, their crusades as the government doing quote unquote,
the right thing. Then we see a guy inside one of
the houses watching TV at a Ramb.
Raid occurs where like an APC slashes through literally
through the drywall and starts a bit of CQB.
I'm going to hand it to you. Rory that's that's that's that
that's your fucking dynamic entry right there.
Like that's absolutely class. Just reversed an M rapid full
speed with the toes up with the drywall is incredibly cool.
It makes for a brilliant opening sequence.
It's an excellent, excellent movie sake of a sequence.
I love how like straight away the suppressing of flash bangs
straight away as as well as it go through.
It's like a shock and it's like shock or it's like fucking
silence of action, you know? If Brian De Palmers were in
this, Emily Blunt, Will yelled. Let's do some good right before
the APC smashed in the wall. Let's.
Do some good. It's it is nice.
It is a good point how incredibly business like and
calm the the team or look as they're in the APC.
There's no one kind of like kind of freaking out or being like
too jittery. There's there's one scene when a
guy adjusts his headphone Mike and like not so there's one bit
of a guy who just has had from Megan.
That's the only real kind of like extraneous movement you see
from them. It's like a very, very precise
team. I like it.
Yeah, there is there is one kill in the house and it is a quote
UN quote good kill in police terminology.
The guy opens fire first is is taken out in the return fire.
So, so far, everything happening probably legally in compliant,
whatever, whatever our way they have.
Then, as I said, after that immediate kill, they discovered
that this house is like some giant drywall mausoleum for lots
and lots of bodies. It's posited that they may have
been legal immigrants who were kidnapped victims.
Yeah, kidnapped, kidnapped victims.
Because she's part of kidnapped task task force, isn't she?
But they're saying it might have been immigrants who were held as
ransom, but then the ransom wasn't paid, so they killed.
Them all, yeah, yeah. Then there's, there's the,
there's an outhouse, isn't there?
And some local police say that there's, there's, there's like a
trapdoor. And of course the guards got
some bolt cutters out and then there was a very large bomb
beneath that trapdoor and holy shit.
Yeah, chaos. Yeah, you see the guy's brain,
man. Yeah, Pink Miss, because I had
to. Pause it and go back.
I was watching it with Emma last night and I was like, I, I think
you see that guy's brain through his skull, you know, And then I
paused and I kicked it back. And as the cops said, crawling
away like, like, you see that shot of like that, like
dismember hand. Yeah, the camera pans up through
the dust and that cops on his hands, knees.
And yet see as as skull cracked open and it's fucking brains
visible. And it's like, holy shit, man.
This film states its intent as far as its depictions of
violence right into open beats. Let me get to our first kind of
important scene. I mentioned earlier on that I
didn't think there was enough evidence in the storyline to
justify the comment in the news, the Wikipedia summary that that
Kate is a principles FBI agent. So what we see is clearly a high
level meeting is taking place probably between here like 2 up
and this delegation that is ostensibly security advisors
from the Department of human security.
That's that's kind of the initial layout of it outside of
the meeting room behind like glass soundproof whatever is
Kate and Reggie and they are talking about themselves going
like, what's this mean about don't know?
Do you know what's about? Don't know who those guys don't
know. They look inside the room at
all. So it's boxed in glass office so
they can see that side of the around the table is Josh Brolin.
He's wearing some like flip flops with these chinos in his
shirt. So like, who is this guy?
Anyone who's seen a filler movie, fans of this podcast
would immediately clock that as going he works for the company
because he looks like someone who worked for the company did
in Vietnam. Yeah.
And in every movie ever, right? So that's a good visual hand.
Big, big Air America energy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's he's riding a he's wearing civilian attire on a military
flight with a little shooting zest on, isn't he?
Yeah, absolutely. I have to say with with with the
shot, the sandals, right, This isn't going down.
We had foot thing. Don't worry.
Remember in Futurama when Doctor Zoidberg first introduced in the
like Doctor Zoidberg, he's weird.
He wears sandals and I consumed instead of a shot of a sandals
that pads out, which shows us these is this gigantic
lobstrosity floppy pink dog, that thing.
And it's like, that's fucking comedy time right there.
But it's like, yeah, so an establishment shot of sandaled
feat will never not be funny for me because it's just like, you
know, yeah. Let me then we go inside the
office and we hear that we heard the discussion.
And again, like, what really hit me this time watching the movie
is how quickly they are trying to establish who of these two
agents would be the most permissive to whatever nefarious
shit they're going to do. Because they're asking about
Reggie and his family situation and what his background is
career wise. As soon as they hear that he has
a degree in law, they're like, yeah, not interested.
Yeah, fuck that shit. Basically.
Yeah, exactly. And then they bring, they bring
Kade and they only ask her like very service level.
They're like they don't ask about any of her professional
background. They've already been pre briefed
that she's just been like tactical the entire time, hasn't
worked any cases. So yeah.
They're referred to her as the thumb.
I don't there. That's right.
So her intellect is much required.
Foreshadowing for Dune? Yeah, I love it.
And then they bring her in and they confirm that she is
divorced and has no kids. And therefore, I guess the the
mental maths that I'm assuming is going on in Josh Brolin's
mind as, what's his name, Matt? Is it Matt Graver?
Yeah. What's going through his mind is
if I get this person killed, I'm not orphaning any children.
And this person has probably not got the intellect or the acumen
to make problems for me. That's, that's what I'm taking
from that this person is probably a bit of a loser.
This person hasn't worked any cases, therefore hasn't got an
investigative mind, or at least it hasn't been trialled.
And if they die, they, they can die.
That's that's that's kind of what I got from that.
Yeah, the the kind of expositional dialogue says,
doesn't it, that which is what they're referring to.
It was a thumb and she's basically just like doing like
tactical operations. She's like a lead on hostage
rescue, but she's not part of the FBI CHRT.
She's like she's like local FBI really good tactical operator is
she's SH, she's not Clarice Stalin.
You know, she's she's not fucking Dana Scully.
She's she's not going to cause him too many problems by
investigating them and over saying them.
She's just that be a signature on a document that says that
that other free letter agency can work with her attached, you
know? Exactly.
And the fact that they don't even explain who he is or what
the other agency is, and she doesn't even have the presence
of minds to ask. Yeah.
Or the gumption to ask. You know, she's thinking about
it. Instead, her boss kind of says
it kind of gives her like a point of no return, the warning
that you'd get in a video game before you went to the final
boss. It's like, you have to volunteer
for this. Think very carefully before you
volunteer for this. You will be joining these guys.
And she asks, like, what a job would be.
And then he says something that must have struck her as being
bullshit because he says, like, you will be tactical liaison
because you've experienced in tactical OPS.
And it's like really, really you local FBI you've you've done a
few room clearances in like domestic settings.
We could we swat team. Why?
Why you and not like I don't know anyone from Delta Force.
Yeah, or even someone from the FBI's actual HRT, the House of
Transcript team, you know? Right, exactly.
Yeah, So and then she gets asked the question.
Brolin kind of says how would you like to make a difference, a
real difference, get the people who are really responsible for
today. And she's like, fire Will, if I
help you, we'll be able to stop today from happening.
And then that's that's the affirmative on that, that she
goes, yeah, I'll volunteer. There's actually nothing in the
text really at this minute to say that she's super principled.
It's just that she's a cop and she saw other cops get killed
today. Yeah.
Is this just? Is this not just revenge?
Yeah, it's not like she's not on like a crusade issue.
She's just seen a bunch of people get turned in a pink
fucking mist. Just just seen a guy crawl
around with a hole in the skull and his brain visible.
Spoiler, probably not an injury compatible with life in the long
term. So she's had a very, very bad
one. And now she's been voluntled to
volunteer to do this. And it's like, yeah.
So I don't think it's through principles.
I think it's because it's kind of kind of shock of contact with
what's happened. Jump in and she's like, well,
fucking OK I guess you know? I don't we we don't get to
anchor ourselves on what she is at the beginning of the movie to
make a comparison with who she's at the end of the film.
We can see changes happening from the beginning stage to the
end state, but we don't get like the like the save the cat.
We don't get like the character beat that tells us who she is.
Yeah, we, you, you really just get a sort of her her
characters. I am uncomfortable.
That's it. You can sort of see the courts
will spike more and more throughout the film, but but
that's pretty much it. Yeah, definitely called as all
Spikes mentioned that That's that's obvious.
But that's absolutely spot on. I will say that.
But do see some grave principles and some of the grades like
beliefs and morals come out in a letter, especially with the bank
when she punched puts herself into the bank because she wants
to investigate and therefore brings down some worse stuff on
her. But yeah, like I I agree that
listener on the blurb is a principled FBI agent actually
sells the character short because it's it's more complex.
There's more going on with her. There's more going on with her.
She's she's a difficult character necessarily get a
handle on, I think. I think she's actually like
shockingly naive to put herself into this position to begin
with. She doesn't, she doesn't
interrogate it very harsh at all.
She kind of just like is quite amenable to being in it very
like results driven, I guess, like can I get to these cartel
guys? Yes, cool, I'll sign up then
whatever. And I don't even think that
she's clocked that the the role they've given is like bogus.
She hasn't had like she asks in the meeting like what's the
objective? And the objective is like to
like. Second, we're.
Going to get the. Cause cause causing of chaos
right on of the because they're going to go and they're going to
get that that guy back over and it's going to cause chaos and.
Yeah, so the cousin of the cop, the snore cartel boss, is going
to get pinched from, I guess he's held in Mexican federal
custody. They're going to transfer him
from a Mexican prison. That's it.
They're going to transfer him back over the border and then
conduct again. She's enough to know about this
and they don't tell her, but they're obviously going to
conduct some kind of illegal rendition on him to either find
stuff out or just cause trouble. So she flies down, but she
travels down to Luke Air Force Base and then flies down to the
Mexican US border in Texas. Yeah, the absolutely just like
fucking Marga poor partner off don't there, Daniel.
They're just, they're just making like fucking turn round
and park up there and it's like, Jesus Christ.
Yeah, right there. Yeah.
So they fly down. We have the sequence which is on
the private jet. Yeah.
We see again Josh Brolin's kind of character established.
So he gets a bit of character establishing.
We see him like flip flops fall off.
He's he falls asleep straight away, isn't interested in
briefing, shows her new respects, has no interest, has
no interest in who she is. It's quite happy just to fall
asleep in her presence. Like don't care.
Similarly, we see Alejandro board the jet.
She assumes that he's American and works for an American free
agency and he doesn't disabuse you of that notion straight
away. But again, he's pretty like
iconic as well and isn't particularly interested in
talking to her too much. It does say you remind me of
somebody, which is paid off later in the movie.
That's about it. Yeah, yeah, I think, I think
that might be one of the few things of Taylor Sheridan's big
expositional dialogue that still survives.
I would love to see the original screenplay.
Yeah, I, I ordinarily would make a look for it, but I think I've
not achieved it this time indeed.
I'm too much like he gots out like a fucking like flip chart
and a PowerPoint or maybe like a little video camera.
I said, do you see? Do you see this is my wife?
Do you see this is her transformed into a cartel murder
victim? Do you see?
This is this is me passing the bar.
Do you see This is me winning my first case?
I was going to see like shows like a super cut of like all the
cases he would against the cartels.
And there's like a slow motion, a video of him that like he
filmed himself as he's going home and seeing his wife and
daughter actually did it every day.
But this time it turns out wrong and and drops to the ground.
And yeah, it's. Brief keys, wrist case drops out
his hand. Yeah, we're getting into it.
There's a there's a mission brief that takes place.
We get a bit of an introduction to like who is in this
operation? There are Delta Force there,
there are US Marshals. Everyone is tooled up.
Everyone has long beards. No one's wearing regulation
military tyre. Therefore everyone is an SF
operator, surely. And she looks around, she clocks
all and she has, she must have the moment where she goes.
I am not the tactical liaison expert.
Yeah, I am just a guy with a badge.
And she still doesn't put it together yet.
That's what really annoys me is that she see her having the
thought process and she knows something's hinky, but she
doesn't. We don't get like the thought
that she's had completed for like another hour and then we
are off to the races. And what is one of the standard
sequences of the film and probably the Kappa of act one,
which is the mission to collect this guy actually like Diaz's
brother from Ciudad Juarez. So they cross the El Paso de
Juarez border. Fascinating sequence.
I want to I want to slow it down for a minute and and talk about
what's going on in the cars on this convoy crossover.
So driving the vehicle that contains Brolin and Kate.
Emily Blunt is Jeffrey Donovan was a character called Steve
Forson. He's the speckled guy with the
moustache. Yeah.
Who's driving the car? And as a convoy is moving
through Juarez, they pass like a big highway overpass and from it
is hanging like 4 dead bodies that have been mutilated.
It's beyond recognition. And Kate sees it has like a
visceral gut reaction. This is the first time seeing
such atrocities out in the wild. Probably very traumatic.
I mean, it's the same week she saw those bodies in that house,
right? And then this guy, Steve
Forcing, who is obviously part of the CIA, starts saying it's
brilliant what they do. It's brilliant what they do.
Like they they make it so that they cut these people up beyond
recognition, so that anyone looking at them assumes that
they're involved, that they've done like heinous things to
deserve this treatment. It's brilliant what they do.
That's what he says. Pretty grim for representatives
of the US government to be showing such admiration of this
butchery, right? Absolutely.
I mean, also was like as as I think some of his first dialogue
with matters when he's saying that dead burns when I pay, you
know, he's he's got himself a social disease on his on his
last jaunt wherever he was, you know.
Yeah. Yeah, he's not presenting
himself as a overseas crusader for for American justice, is he?
It's not like it's not true of justice in the American ways.
It's it's like pretty, pretty rich in imperialism.
It's not it's not a social film about where it's going with this
stuff. My worry is that this is from
Taylor Sheridan's scripts and he doesn't see a problem with it.
That's just like I get the impression that he maybe thinks
it's like, this is the way the world and I'm and I'm just
making you guys wake up to the reality of the situation.
What this film doesn't do is doesn't interrogate the cartels
at all. This could be taking place on
freaking Mars, right? I should say there's a there's a
counter narrative that is a very loose mirror for Kate and a
Mexican police officer called Silvio.
Yeah. So, so we see another like
equivalent, like, I mean, they're not totally because
she's the FBI. He's a beat cop.
But you have like, you know, standard law enforcement, bottom
of the totem pool during these events.
One from the Mexican cartel side, one from the American law
enforcement side. And they're meant to they're
meant to kind of rhyme, right. That as far as skills, though,
in terms of like getting to the heart of the issues like that
Sylvio, Sylvio son. So he doesn't want to touch the,
his dad's shotgun. He doesn't want him to, you
know, but then he goes and plays soccer in the street and he
hears the gunfire in the background and it's like
inevitable that he's going to take up that life at some point,
which is just kind of a bit lazy.
So we carry on with the the the convoy to pick up the guy from
the courthouse. And there's a bit of like
tension when all the vehicles are static next to the
courthouse. Alejandro reminds them casually.
Like if it's going to happen, it won't happen here.
It'll happen at the border. I like that the very beginning
of the sequence we got like a nice overhead shot.
There's a lot of drone footage in this one before it was like,
but before it was a thing and it was like it was still exciting
and I don't I haven't seen it done any.
I don't really see apart from the movie Ambulance, I've not
seen drone footage done an exciting different way besides.
This thing as well, you know, when when the when the private
plane like the the project takes off and you say, well, that
obviously birds out view footage.
The shadow of the plane is there.
So I wonder if it's drone footage with the shadow added in
post. It probably would be wouldn't
it, whether it's general like kind of stability or would it be
shot from an actual plane? I mean, how, how, how, how hard
was Dennis Villeneuve going to go on this?
Tony Villeneuve is a It goes incredibly hard.
I mean, you think build a new fucking border crossing the
filming so yeah. Yeah, if you look at like, even
his smaller budget movies like Enemy has an incredible effect
shot involving as well as a giant spider, you wouldn't see
it coming. If you've seen the movie.
It's also got Jake Gyllenhaal and Jake Gyllenhaal as twins.
Yeah, man, that sounds so good. Yeah, man, that.
Sounds so good. Yeah, if you think about the
effect shots that he's then gone to apply in Arrival in June,
June Part 2, like there's no one making like these grace big
blockbuster action sequences in such like a believable way that
he's doing. If you look at like the Marvel
kind of sloppots pumping out at an insane rate and like the
effect shots on them, a lot of them are fine.
So they're not like mind blowing.
And then if you look at like think of June 2021, the sequence
where they're they're under the ambush from the Harkins and they
run out and all their all their gunships are all just getting
blown up in front of them in the in the night sky and it's
lighting everything up. That's incredible.
Man. That looks so good.
Yeah. So I wouldn't be surprised if
that's a very simple, I see a very simple, obviously very,
very difficult to do putting up a shadow on to to lend it like
weight and physicality. Cool, I was going to say sorry,
you mentioned it. They they created a new border
crossing for the purpose of the movie.
You get you get the incredible setup, which is the US to Mexico
crossing is completely cleared out and they zip through new
issues. You see early foreshadowing of
the incredible tailback on the Mexico to to US side and they
haven't and they haven't even bothered to like close a lane or
anything. They they just left it to be the
complete cluster fact that it's going to be in a bit.
I I'm amazed that they just and I don't know if there's a is
there a commentary there? Is there like a bit of a bit?
Yeah, on on the return the sea something along lines of the
waving vehicles through to to kind of clear up space.
And but then when you see when the returning with the guy that
taken from the courthouse heading back to the border and
you start to see the drone footage, you see there's been a
breakdown. There's a vehicle pulled over
kind of kind of a crooked to one side with steam coming up from
its from its bonnets. So there's been something broken
down and that's kind of caused like a bit of a bit of a hitch
in it. So that's why the the run into
this problem, you know? Yeah, I thought it had a bit of
a sense of like complacency about it, like American kind of
complacency. Like we don't give a fuck.
We'll we'll do it. We're going to prepare because
we've got unlimited resources to throw everything.
Who cares? That's that's kind of vibe I
got. Like if you've got a shit sort
of material, why bother preparing and closing a lane in
preparation for and stuff? We'll be fine.
We'll just bowl on through. Like it's arrogant is what it
is. Anyway, so they get to the
crossing. The crossing is a gridlock.
And then we have this like amazing tense moment where we
are, it's like we're in the car, we're looking at all the other
cars and we're picking up the same things.
There's like all the cars with all guys in them.
The cars with guys were all heavily tattooed, the guys.
Is that smuggling a weapon there?
And and like the confirming the ROA at that point, like it's
like looking like kind of kind of like the the governed by at
least some kind of rules, you know, the ROA.
It's like you don't fire unless you fired a pawn kind of thing.
And again, this film does tension really well.
This film is essentially one massive gigantic tension ritual.
Yeah, and the tension of of this scene is absolutely amazing.
I'll probably pop off about later as well when I talk about
weapons handling and stuff in the film because I've got a lot
of research about guns and shit in this movie.
I will go. Incredibly good.
I will go too deep into it. Then I will say there's a
narrative economy or a narrative effect applied by them having
that are we discussion well in situ in the scene.
So I kind of, I get, I get it because it, you know, it's, it
brings more attention because it's like, oh, they're talking
about what happens when they start shooting.
There's going to be some shooting.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that.
Obviously there would be like a reminder of the ROA.
Someone probably wouldn't ask the question, but someone else
would. Oh, maybe they would if they
weren't sure. Yeah.
This kind of stuff happens. Yeah.
It's interesting that we never get the ROA briefed in the
actual mission brief prior. Yeah, that's right.
And later in the film, there's another similar situation where
there's a detailed mission brief happening and there is no, are
we briefed during that? And the subjects were always
broached and then waves off during that.
Yeah, 'cause quality of briefings in this film are
diabolical. Yeah.
Really bad briefings. As a guy who goes around
assessing people's mission briefs for for a living.
Really really bad briefs. All these feeling bossed, all
these guys are going to feel bossed, Mike.
Yeah, yeah, not not my Walker who just probably gets on my
Walker with hair like that hair like a party.
You can don't do that anymore. The hair regulations have
completely opened up. It's ridiculous.
Anyway you. Guys are getting hair to
regulate. But yeah, so it's just an
incredible, becomes an amazing and amazing shootout scene.
You just say again, fantastic violence of action, weapons
handling. It's it's exciting, it's
thrilling. And it ends with a Benicio Del
Toro doing the masculine urge to sit open boot of a hatchback and
be exfiltrated as it drives away.
Yeah, go, go, go. Just like stand in the boot with
your legs hanging out when you fucking MP5.
Like yeah, dreams are made of. Brilliant.
I love it. There's a payoff to it's
something from Alejandra as well, who you mentions to Kate
as doing the approach that you can't always trust the state
police. And then lo behold, when the
ambush takes place, the low level cartel hitmen are
dispatched pretty quickly between the combined CIA,
whoever else there but spying in the rearview mirror of the car.
Kate spots a federal agent like point his gun at her head and
she has to turn and shoot the guy for the window and kills a
guy and she has a pretty good visceral reaction.
She like, shoots him and drops an F bomb.
She's like, what the fuck? What are we doing here?
Good concern, Kate, Very good concern.
Situational awareness. Great.
Yeah, absolutely. I would say good question, well
asked. Probably raise it at a more
appropriate time after this is all over.
But yeah, she she does that kills, kills a federal police
officer in self defence is a visibly horrified.
And then they return to the US, where Alejandro and Matt have
this guy Gelmo in a little torchy dark room of rendition.
This point, the narrative spinters off a little bit.
So the film could have followed Kate the hallway.
But we get a bit of an insight into what's going on with this
Guillermo guy. I don't know if he needs it.
We're already pretty sure that Matt and Alejandro are doing bad
stuff, right? Yeah.
But but we get it anyway. I mean, what's, what's your take
on it? So we got that like before it
gets into there, the horrific torture sequence.
We do got that bit when that Mexican guy who was either a
Mexican high level law enforcement or someone from like
the legal system with a judge or a prosecutor or something has a
chat with Alejandro. And like Alejandro was very much
like, you'd still want to be in there, man.
Because if you're not in there, you can just see you didn't see
what happened. It's got the big fuck off bottle
of water from from the water dispenser.
And it's like it is deeply uncomfortable to say Alejandro
just pushes crotch into the guy's face, right?
Yeah, that's grim. That is, that is really
uncomfortable watching. Yeah, big.
I mean, it's like, again, I don't know if Taylor Sheridan
thought that was cool or not. That's my that's the question
I'm always asking myself watching this film is I know
Danny Villenev doesn't think it's cool.
I think I think he knows it's monstrous.
Yeah. I think Taylor showed Taylor
Sheridan think it's actually genuinely quite cool.
I mean, I don't know much of Taylor Sheridan's work.
I'll put my hands up right there.
But I mean, yeah, So what? Whether he thinks it's cool or
not, the way it's shown in moving pictures and lights and
sound, it's fucking horrible. I like to witness.
I like that's only the owners shows sort of restraint here.
A lesser filmmaker would have shown us the water boarding,
right? It's the commit, or at least the
commencement of the war boarding.
Water boarding is really frigging horrific and it's awful
awful awful. I'm not even say but afrig as it
is a fucking horrible thing. The film also has more bloody
gore in it and I think that trying like kind of keep like
the shock, the visual shock of these horrible gory deaths and
tortures and stuff. And you can just work out when
you mind what's happening to him.
Because obviously 2015 at this point, what important is
something that's been in the public, the public eye for quite
some time. It's it's very understood.
This is a really horrendous, surrendous thing.
So the film is leaving it's real shock and fucking awe for the
gruesome brutal violence scenes and like the the family
destruction later on and stuff, you know?
The film is sensibly about. I say about is set against the
backdrop of the war on Drugs, right?
Yeah. But it's also probably a bit of
a commentary on the global War on Terror, I think in the sense
that war polling comes up as a subject something and rendition
comes up as a subject something that was very much in the public
conscience, as you say, with, you know, Guantanamo Bay 10:10
or so years prior, Abu Ghraib. You know, these are images that
people knew about. So crimes committed by, let's
say, law enforcement or the military against people with
brown skin is something that we are familiar with.
And I think it's something that's probably not lost on on
the, you know, French Canadian director Denny Villeneuve there.
Picking up like Guillermo and stuff as well, it's the idea
that like they're trying to create on the trying to create
enough tension and unease inside the cartels operating systems
that they're going to have to recall the guy they've got in
the states back over. Manuel Diaz, I think his name
is, Yeah. Yeah, which is why the then kind
of do that operation to to stop, as you know, to stop as kind of
money trained to stop this money laundered thing that's going on
because they know this is what's going to cause the cartel on top
of all this thing to kind of bring them back, you know.
So we chopped, then they've got the fucking stalking horse that
can follow in and then Alejandro can deal with Alejandro does
best. Yeah.
So before we make the the shot levester to some, we get a shot
from what's Kate doing at this time and she's hanging around
with the rest of them tapping up outside.
One of the large operator guys says, hey, you come with me.
I want to show you something cool.
Yeah, I'd like fireworks. Yeah, you like fireworks.
And they climb on top of the building and look over the
border into Mexico, into Juarez, and they see like the absolute
chaos that has been brought about by the decapitating the
the head of the local cartel. So she wasn't already horrified
by the violence she's seen today.
She's like horrified now that like I've just made like I've
just been part of an operation that has made like war hit the
streets as far as I can see. And it's like trace of fire and
explosions and like all the little police lights trying to
like swarm around it. It's a, it's a great image,
horrifying, but it's a great image, you know?
The way the scenes shot as well, they almost like feel that, like
that kind of like high desert cooled kind of thing in the way
it's shot. Let's say, again, this is
beautifully shot. It's expansive.
Yeah, there's, there's, there's this kind of cool cooled both in
demeanour and in temperature feeling to it in, in like the
visuals that are presented. And the gunfire is so distant
that like you don't feel it, like you don't take it as like a
visceral kind of thing. But you see, this is this is,
this is beautiful yet fucking awful because you can understand
what's going on and it's like it's it's so close to civilise
it to civilization, yet so far we're separated by just to get
arbitrary border and fences and stuff.
And like they've they've like kind of set things and happened.
And now that's sitting back and watching it and it's just
uncanny and eerie at times. It's brilliant.
A moment of calm watching absolute horror unleashed on the
streets of the city, basically. They get they get some
incredible images during this. So I often to cry the Netflix
ifification of films that we see nowadays.
And one of the things I hate the most is the very shallow depth
of fields that has become like in vogue now allows the
filmmaker. It's a bit of a crutch that
allows the filmmaker not to worry about too much what's in
the back of the frame because they can just make it blurry.
So you don't have to care too much about what's in the back of
the frame anymore. This film neatly avoids that and
is not afraid to have visual detail in the background as well
as the foreground. And in that sequence, there's a
beautiful shot where it's wide, they're walking right to left to
the edge of the roof where they're going to watch the
explosions happening. Incredible sky behind them, like
just just an incredibly beautiful like tumultuous, like
like clouds. It's night, but there's there's
all these beautiful clouds and there's like you can see like a
storm. You can see literally an actual
storm brewing in them like dark darkened seeds of clouds around
these billows of white. Just like like a like a like a
oh man. I don't get like a level English
about it, but it looks amazing. While we're on some visual
visuals, I want to drop it now because I feel that we have to.
Has anyone noticed the costuming of the movie?
How at the very beginning of the film, after the initial raid,
first time we see her in cities, Kate is wearing a blue T-shirt
and then as the film progresses on, it'll be turned into a grey
T-shirt and I'll turn to a pale grey T-shirt by the end.
You notice that? Yeah, yeah.
It's like the lifeblood of hers bleeding out and the colour is
is fading. Just a nice visual touch that
they didn't have to do but they did.
It looks cool. No, definitely one.
It's brilliant. She's just been like, worn away
by the whole thing, you know? Yeah, cool.
So we get to Tucson, AZ, we see the sequence where the amassed
immigrants have just been sat before they get processed
further. Pretty grim.
Um, I think we can all agree. But they find out where these,
these tunnels are. We also get like, I think it's,
this isn't the last time you see Reggie because he comes with
them on the raid, but we get Reggie trying to throw his
weight around a little bit to try and get to the boat.
What's going on? I presume there's a sense of
self importance that comes from being an agent in the FBI that
they assume they are carrying. They are holding some weight
here. And I don't know how she could
have gone through what she went through in Juarez and not
realised. I'm not, I'm not contributing to
this operation whatsoever. Yeah, man, in a weird kind of
players a little bit on the kind of trope you get in like a cop
shows and cop movies and stuff, how the FBI are the ones who
turn up and pissing everyone's chips.
And they're the ones who immediately respected by by
like, well, not respected with other ones who immediately
forced themselves to overrule the local beat cops, the local
city or state accounting agencies and stuff.
And here you see a situation when there's always a bigger
fish, to quote Star Wars and and these FBI guys pale in
comparison to the other three letter agencies and to the
people who are. What is the line?
Elected, not appointed. Yeah, that's.
Well, I mean, it's safe. So what kind of shows the FBI is
losing the power and the authority when they've got this
much government bearing down on them?
You. Know so the sequel explicitly
goes into those halls of power and Catherine Keener I think
plays the Secretary of State for defence and has a role in it and
yeah yeah so we see like the decisions coming straight from
the White House to go and sort out Mexico.
I want to say it, yeah, I I've heard a lot about it.
I haven't, I haven't watched the movie yet.
So saving it for a rainy day. So the next thing that happens
is the task force raids a bank used to launder, launder Diaz's
money as a way of like again, causing trouble for Diaz making
making it his appears in Mexico necessary.
As you say, they find financial evidence.
They're doing some kind of funky thing where they they're putting
tonnes of money into the bank. It's to pay back a loan.
Therefore the money going in only represents on statements
and stuff as a negative balance getting more negative.
Therefore it's not like seen by the IRS.
It's not seen by, you know, the FBI or anything.
And he was tracking financial crime.
So that's how he's got, that's how he's got away with this so
long. It's like $9000 a day or
something. It's insane money.
I'm actually really pissed off because I'm like about to start
and I'm I'm money laundering course and I wish I fucking did
a while ago. You said of I've been able to
have really good opinions on this.
But yeah, just just imagine I said something cool about this
course. I've yet to start.
But but yes, like they say, it's essentially it's a kind of like
non existent money, except it's appearing as like like like kind
of minuses on on like a running balance.
Right, so. The critical thing that happens
during the sequences is we get one of our favourite things on
Clear Present Dudes, which is a little van which has an OPS room
inside of it. Yes, love a little van with an
OPS room inside of it where they're watching camera feeds of
what's going on in the bank as they're doing their little sting
operation which they successfully execute.
Kate doesn't listen to Matt's advice not to enter the bank.
You just getting out of that van, just like a lot of people
have done, a lot of films have covered before this.
Yep, got to go out of the van, got to get involved and then she
does it and we see her on the CCTV cameras.
A bit of a very good bit of visual storytelling there to
show us that it's not as I should go in the bank.
It's like these cameras have seen her and we can just tell
implicitly by looking at it only for the cameras lenses that it's
like she's fucked up. Yeah, she, she, she, she has now
got on the radars of other people and she really shouldn't
have, as we say quite soon after that.
Yeah, so. Use work against her.
That's right. So she goes so I guess to wash
off the day, I suppose they're told to like go home and get
some sleep and stuff. They go her and Reggie don't
have a clue his character. They go to like a cowboy bar
with like just some of that some of that modern pop country
playing, which I fucking hate. You know, country songs used to
be about like real things, right people?
Country songs used to be like, about people like strolling on
the land and like their their their loved ones dying and
stuff. And now they're all about like
how much you should drink a cold beer.
And they're all written by guys who own like 20,000,000 LB homes
and fucking their own golf courses.
People never done a day's hard work in their life telling you
to eat some fried chicken and have a cold beer.
Fucking fuck off anyway. Man.
Oh great, you fucking couldn't be lost and bang out.
Called my wife, sold my cyber truck to an immigrant.
I mean think about it, with the rise of of self driving cars and
AI, it's only a matter of time before we actually get that
song. Yeah, it'll be it'll be my cyber
truck broke down brackets because of woke.
Because of all these purple haired liberals broke my cyber
truck. These purple haired pan gender
liberals really don't give a fuck about my all American not
South African cyber truck. I love Jesus and guns and
Jesus's specific gun which is visible in the Turin shroud if
you look really carefully. It was It was appendix carrying
in 1911. That took that took it anyway.
So they go to this bar and man, what a jump scare.
John Burnfall. Jump scare.
John Burnfall jump scare. Whoa, I didn't know I was still
with Super Cup. Oh shit, shame from The Walking
Dead. Fucking Wayne Jenkins from Way
in the Sound. Fucking yeah again.
John Burn for The Punisher. A guy who exists only to be a
fuck up and everything he's in, I love him.
How does he do it? How does he find that energy to
be the same? He's the same character and
everything. He's a hyper masculine guy who's
fucked up. Hashtag our guy.
Hashtag Oh my God. He's he's, he's very much our
guy and I've got a lot of love for the dude.
I love him too. I love him too.
I think he's I think he's brilliant.
He's perfectly cast in this because he's yet another
instrument of law that is engineers against Kate and his
vibes are off immediately. And I don't know because we all
know who Jon Birnthal is, but but that vibes off always vibes
off. I mean, the thing that I would
need to mention about Kate at this point is like, although
it's like, Kate, you're a fucking busted fam cell with an
ancient bra. No one's gonna, no one's, no
one's gonna want to make you a trad wife, Kate.
But as my wife pointed out, Emily Blunt's really fucking
pretty and she's really fucking pretty in this film.
And like, he's like homes the fuck straight in, right?
And it's like. They didn't do enough to to to
clear up. They could have, they could have
made her face greasier, they could have made her hair
greasier. They could have like really like
skis drop a bit than that, couldn't they?
I mean not even making her look gross or anything which was I'm
thinking more like going like the full on fem cell root.
So like he takes a home and they go into the bedroom and they
start fooling around but then like he looks down he's found
like 1/2 eaten 3D old pizza inside a bed sheets and.
That's a romance of a Taco Bell Gordito.
Yeah, the room just smells of like 4 different kinds of fast
food over like a week. You look so about this like a
gaming rig with three screens. One of them is on Reddit, one of
them is on 4 Chan. One of them is just got like a
loop of just like fan fan fan fan made man on man Supernatural
the TV series Winchester this. One, this is like horse girl.
No, it's a fan cell. A different thing.
Horse girls fuck fan cells don't.
No talk about the movie Horse Girl, but yeah, sorry, Allison
Brie movie where she's obsessed with superdatural.
Oh. My God, holy shit.
To beat a movie, I love it. I love it.
Fucking brilliant movie in the middle of the floor.
She's got like an upended copy of The Fountainhead she's got.
She's got to go fuck. Like, like fucking the Punisher
trips over like, just like a pile of individuals.
I'm going, yeah, he's the Punisher.
He fucking trips over like individuals.
Signed copies of Atlas Shrugged that it's just like, in like a
little pile. This, this.
There's like 45 squish Ballers on the bed.
She just sleeps on top of them. It's the least comfortable thing
in the world ever. Well, it's a squish baller
behind me, by the way. I don't give a fuck.
All all all of her clothes are probably the one Jack is in her
wardrobe, which is 1 giant Star Wars pug.
Oh. My fucking God.
And like, yeah, so they could have, they could have gone
really down at the kind of fem cell root.
Like there's like anime body pillows that he goes in.
Well like dining room, there's like a four seat table, 3 of the
seats have a different anime body pillow.
And there's evidence that has been like having candlelit meals
with them and stuff, and it just smells crazy in there, right?
I think, I think what we've said in our own inevitable way is
that her character is somewhat underwritten.
There was, there was stuff there to learn.
Exactly, they could have, they could have gone fully crazy fam
cell with her is what I'm saying.
And that would have been even funnier when the Punisher had
sex with her. Well, the Punisher didn't have
sex with her, did he? He fooled down with her a
little. Bit but in the words of George
Costanza kissing his sex, but you're correct, there was there
was no coitus because then she saw that that like rubber band
recognised that it was being used terrible fucking Opsac by a
complex money laundering ring. By the way, to have like really
distinctive what look like charity rubber wristbands.
Probably not, but it's like, that's terrible.
Just use a standard, you know, rubber.
Band. That's a band, Yeah.
Real fucking bad. Terrible, terrible, terrible.
Upset, you know. Very weird.
Very weird choice, a bit contrives.
It has to happen for the film. Exactly, exactly.
It couldn't have been any other way of doing that.
That's just ridiculous. You had.
AI mean I'm I'm I mean it's. Like a phone text or something
or anything could happen, you know?
I'm that's a fairpoint a second meeting in the in the opening
scene when they're doing that like really kind of tight CQB.
Then they go into that room without flash banging at 1st and
she got shot at that. That has to happen so they can
get a big honking hole in the wall and then it's a dead body
insider kind of thing. But so I understand like things
like, oh, he's got this, this really glaringly obvious thing
in his pocket that he pulls out. It's it's the thing that has to
happen for the script. But but.
It's got his I'm a money launderingist band.
Live strong and also loaned our money it's like.
This one, this one's, this one's my helpful heroes 1 and this is
my organised crime one, and on this one is my country
awareness. What would Jesus do?
Bracket loaned our money is the answer to that.
Change money. Sam, son, we got a New Testament
in here. Bars I.
Was doing with super cop so. Fucking God, that's good.
You're good away from. Come on.
Can you go away for a long time, buddy?
Yeah. So they.
Yeah, he viciously attacks her. Yeah.
And then just as you think her life is about to end, Alejandra
appears and presumably off screen, we don't see it, beats
fuck out of him. And it turned out that all along
it was a sting operation to track down this one guy.
And we used Kate as bait or as, as Josh Brolin mansplains to her
as she used herself as bait by walking in front of a CCTV
camera. It's it's pretty grim.
Yeah. Because Brolin could have
fucking stopped all right, I mean Brolin could have stopped
that going in. He could have put hands on it,
could have said no, fucking literally don't do this.
You could have explained it further, but he didn't.
And then he comes Mansplain and you are like that means man
explaining and. What's called ascending?
That's when I talk down to you. People have got to listen really
fucking close to this episode, so don't get cancelled, all
right? Yeah, we are.
We are mocking these people we are not agreeing with with with
Ship. Yeah, it's fucked up.
It's fucked up, it's fucked up. And then we we get a great scene
in, I guess one of their cars with a heavily beaten John Burn
for the backseat. And then we get what I can only
describe as the most violent wet Willy I've ever seen from
Benicio Del Zaro. Just wets it sticks a finger in
easier to the point where it causes a physical discomfort.
That's oh man. Like what's he going to do next?
Like give him a noogie, an atomic wedgie.
A fucking Chinese bird or something.
Chinese bird. He's going to, he's uncuffed and
take his hands and give him a game of peanuts.
That's, that's a very British reference to people of our
particular generation. Sorry, Americans and people from
other nations that don't have peanuts.
The game, not peanuts. The food, you've got the food,
but the game's different. Brilliant.
Yeah. So we find out that of course
John Burn falls very, very junior in the organisation.
Just a dirty cop got in with his head.
Josh Brolin threatens the life of his ex-wife by threatening
the doctor. Yeah.
And his and his daughter, yeah. Yeah, straight up I'm going to
post that details on the. Yeah, fucked up, man.
Yeah, it's like, not even we're going to send the boys round.
We're just going to like do like a fucking post on like, like
Fortune or whatever. I'm like.
Why? Why?
I have yet to decide on this film, but I guess it's answered
by the fact there's a sequel where they're portrayed as the
good guys. I guess in terms of like writing
it, they presume that all this, let's call it the squeeze is, is
worth all the juice, right? They think that they think that
the writer of this, like Taylor Sheridan, presumably thinks that
this is, this is just the cost of doing business to fight crime
against the car cells. It's almost like you got like
really, really pissed one night. It was like, you know what they
should do? They should just bring one guy
from Colombia and they should just topple all the Mexicans and
have it all be Colombians. And then they should just
fucking regulate it. But like don't tell people.
Just have the government regulate.
Just got to say it to regulate it.
The old Potomac 2 step Jack. This is the plot of Clear and
Present Danger all over again. Anyway, sorry I don't know where
I came from. It came straight out of Medellin
baby. Right.
So what we've learned is the location of a tunnel, what's
going on with the tunnel and the money.
We've sufficiently pissed off Manny Diaz that he has to go
back to Mexico to talk to his his bosses.
OK, When Matt reveals to the other two that the Reggie and
Kate are the only reason that they're involved in this
operation whatsoever is to permit the CIA to operate within
US borders as a legal technicality.
Was that surprising to you at all?
Did it come as a bit of like, Oh my God, it got me?
Or is it like clearly obvious? We'll see.
The first time I've watched it, I wasn't aware that that was the
case because this was, this was before I got, I probably became
more like kind of defence pilled and global security pilled after
the first time we saw this film, I guess.
So it wasn't like fully, well, the CIA couldn't operate
domestically. I'm fully of this kind of thing.
It was, it was a little bit of a surprise, a little bit of an
interest in the revelation because at that point he knew
that there was something going on.
There was something, there was some especially free agency and
it's not a main bending like, you know, realisation that was
just that the CIA can operate on the American crown, etcetera.
Yeah, I guess like the first time I watched that, I probably
wasn't like tracking that as much as well.
Yeah. It's weird if you trying to
remember what it was like the first time I saw it because it
doesn't really make like a tonne of sense.
Like they kind of hand wave how she got involved in pretty
quickly in the story. Like we talked about the scene
earlier on about how she's attached to them as a tactical
liaison. Her output is if I was like her
employer, you know, her outputs to me is really nebulous.
Like what what's she producing? They talk a little bit about and
I think it's later in the movie, like very, very, I say later,
like the next scene from this, they talk about how if there's
any drugs impounded during during the op, the FBI, the ones
responsible for confiscating it and like that like.
So yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty narrow remit she has.
I mean, like, like me, the pretty much teller don't like
just stay at the back and keep your safety on kind of thing.
And it's like. She gets, so she gets a lot of
there's a lot of misogyny in this film.
And I'm not going to be like the guy who's man, if people listen
to this podcast and they go, oh, it's a woke podcast because this
guy's talking about misogyny. I mean, Jesus Christ, man.
Like, I don't know what to tell you.
Like like they are, they are showing this like law
enforcement officer. We're like 0 respect.
She's like, she's one of them essentially, right.
Yeah. I mean, the guys saying it to
her specifically is like some Delta Force operator.
I get it. Yeah.
Big swinger take ego the size of a planet because he's fucking SF
Roach. I get it.
But but they're still on the same side.
Yeah. There's like no sense of team
like cohesion there at all. You'd think the US government
could just like create the sign off, could just fake it.
You know, he has, he has a random signature kind of thing.
It's like. It's almost a bit naive this
film now. But I mean like.
In the current context, if you, if you put it against the
backdrop of like, you know, Trump kidnapping the fucking
dictator in charge of Venezuela, you know, like unilateral
bullshit happening, I don't think he cares what side of the
border what's going on. No, I don't.
I don't. I don't think he, they're at the
point now where they are not even attempting to lie because
there's no one to hold them accountable.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fucking most crooked DOJ ever,
it would seem. Yeah.
OK, so we have a mission brief about these these these these
tunnels. They're getting some humid from
a from a local asset during the mission brief.
Again, movie stuff, isn't it? That all happened well
beforehand. They have that thing where they
talk about our way and then they push it off later.
Again, effective for a movie would happen in real life, I
don't think. And then we get like the next,
the final sort of big set piece, if you like, which is this route
in the toes. I love the sequence.
It looks incredible it. Really does, yeah.
I want to get a second to shout out the use of their image
enhancers as part of like the visual language of the sequence.
We get like IR camera feed from like one guy looking at Kate.
So we see Kate in her face and everything IR very cool.
They they swap over to MVGS and we check them.
Yeah. Tooting off, put the MVG on.
We see the MVG query. I don't know how they achieved
it in the movie. I don't know if either of you
guys have worn MVG before, but there's a really weird.
The only thing I can think of is it's a bit like, you know when
you play an FPS game and you open up the console and you can
change what the field of vision is.
There's like, it's like on a different setting than real life
when you look for MVGS. It's weird.
I think that the best way to explain it is like feels like if
you're standing sort of half a metre behind yourself.
Yeah, that's it. Yeah, perfect.
So the ask, ask what's the ROA rules of engagement for people
who don't know? And Josh Brolin's character Matt
says weapons free, my friend. Weapons free.
Right. First of all, that's not how you
give an executive order. But again, he's fucking CIA.
He's a spook. He's not a fucking military guy
anymore. Presumably he was once That's
that's that's you know, neither here nor there.
The the other thing is like weapons free.
Just to be clear, weapons free is the order to shoot anything
that moves. It's a crazy bit of our way to
to to give off like any like ID crit.
There's no ID crit is going on you.
You are you're seeing something and you're killing it
immediately and asking questions later.
Whiles to me personally, but very easy for me to say it's an
armchair warrior. I guess I wasn't in that fucking
tunnel. I get it but but.
Wait a minute, are you telling me that you weren't the 15th man
in the tunnel or on the balcony? I know, right?
The ridiculous. Before we go back, when they're
at the motel, they'd have the briefing and, and Kate and and
Reggie, like, angrily got to their car to pick up their plate
protective. Do you notice that, like Kate
puts like 4 plates into a vest? Yeah.
And Reggie puts like one plate in his vest.
Yeah, what the fuck? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because she was like front and back.
And then he's the important. Lucky guy.
So they go in the tunnel, MVGS come off, go in the tunnel,
helmet comes off in the tunnel, Reggie and Kate gets split up.
I think a stray bolt gonna get kind of catches the Kate.
Otherwise I think a gun gets shot.
Yeah, yeah, by the ricochet. Kid kids, kids rifle gets hit.
So she obviously like Kasich, just I guess abandoned it and
just switched to a pistol and and shake advances on doesn't
she goes up the wrong tunnel exit and she ends up in the
garage where they've been loading up that police car with
with La Cocaina or rather unloading it.
Yeah, the products. And we see Silvio.
So the world's collide. Emily Blunt sees Silvio, the
Mexican cop who's obviously under a lot of pressure to be
part of the cartel. Yeah, we get that and then we
get a showdown. Alejandro arrives, people
recognise him immediately for who he is, the Medelline, part
of the Medelline Cartel. So he's famous guy, obviously
everyone knows who he is and he kills one guy.
Kate holds her piss up to him and is talking to him and
without warning whatsoever he shoots you in the chest in the
in the plates. Straight up double taps are,
yeah. Knocked her on the Knox and rash
and says don't ever hold a weapon to me again.
So the mask is off. Not that there was much of A
mask already like but it's interesting because like
beforehand he'd like saved her life from from John Bernthal.
It's kind of been saying you remind me of like somebody in my
life. Probably his daughter, right,
which just paid off later. And he's been really nice.
She's also been like traumatised by what happened there.
And I think he like kind of talks her down a little bit from
the ledge after after attack. So I see him like emotionally
without a second thought. I just put two in the chest and
like, sit your ass down. Yeah, yeah, he's in.
Fuck around. Yeah, I can't see seems like
this anymore without thinking of I want to take your that bit
from striking distance. But he's like butter proves
who's the best cop Jesus striking distance ruined me for
lots of things. Now colour professed Jesus
Christ. Wonderful stuff.
Dennis Farida, man 18 years a detective.
I love that fact. Gosh.
Cool. So what do we see?
It kind of splits off again, doesn't it?
You follow half of it kind of is following Alejandro, which I
think we'll we'll come a second. The other half is Kate.
So the rest of the office happened.
Alejandro was supposed to right off on his own.
He is not not accounted for. He is just off on his own little
side quest now. Yeah, the rest of the team is
like high fiving fucking circle jerk tea and stickies like
another great clean up, clean up.
They killed a bunch of people clean up.
So lost a weapon clean up. He's doing a fuck Reggie's like
where's Kate? And he's like, I thought she was
with you fucking high 5 clean up.
Like haven't even accounted for workforce.
Ridiculous. And then she stumbles out like
obviously breathing heavily. Jess is probably incredibly
bruised, all that kind of stuff. And then she swings Josh Brolin,
which is, and this is horrible. Swings are really satisfying.
Punching the grid, great. He froze onto the ground with an
incredible violence. Yeah.
They tussle for a little bit and then he kind of forces it into
the side of a good ditch and then forces his knee into her
throat to cut her airway and then holds her head down with
the palm of his hand. Like you would like a naughty
cat if it was like attacking you.
And until then, she she like, calm down, calm down, fucking
calm down. And it's horrible to see, like
humbled, like old country fashion, really bad.
Don't like seeing it. This film is like, there's a lot
of horrible violence in this film, but like the violence that
is happening to Emily Blunt the whole way through is like just
particularly grim. Yeah, this film kicks a shit out
of other whole way through. Yeah, you have to imagine, and
we'll get to it when we, like, do the final scenes.
But you have to imagine like, like, what was she?
What would that character be like the day after this movie
like she has? She's got to be like handing a
badge and a gun in and just be like, fuck this country anyway
anymore before we go on to Alejandro's kind of crowning
crowning. This is this is just I find
interesting how so much of the preamble of this film was just
so they could fucking infiltrate him in to get close to to this
this guy and kill him. And it's like, did the need to
do all this just to give him an in?
This is where I think Taylor Sheridan plays his cards, and I
think this is unavoidable in the screenplay.
I don't think Denny Villeneuve could do anything about this.
Obviously he's a working director, he's taken a job, and
he's obviously making someone else's screenplay.
Like, this is where the movie kind of shows its hand and says
this Alejandro guy, he's really cool.
This guy fucking rules. You might not like.
You might not like it how he does things.
You might think it's grotesque, abhorrent even, But, oh, isn't
it fucking cool, though? Yeah, man.
So yeah, we have the bet in the car with Silvio.
So he's driving in the back of the police cruiser.
Yeah. Holding the gun to Silvio's
head. And this is like really horrible
for us because we know, like we followed Silvio, he's like, he's
just a dude. He's a father.
He's trying to get by. We don't see enough of his life
to make a judgement about how he got into the cartel team was
sort of super tragic, but it's pretty tragic.
Yeah. Pulls over Diaz.
Yeah. Who's then pretty grim.
Like he you're probably cover it the weaponry, but be kill Silvio
shoots him in the back of the head.
Yeah. And then he shoots and then he
like shoots Diaz to wound. Yeah.
Pretty grim. Yeah, get some in the car and
then drive back. Oh, it's the drive to to Diaz's
boss's house. Like to the to the to the kind
of Yeah. Like they're like the real, the
real, the real hefe of the thing.
And it is. Julio Caesar Cedillo.
That's right, and we'll see the It's horrible.
It leads to scenes of just family eradication and a little
bit of kind of verbal grandstanding that they probably
couldn't take out of the film because he needed to have some
dialogue, right. I mean, he couldn't just he he
couldn't speak a fucking mute. But so he finally delivers the
exposition that I think was probably delivered.
Well, yeah. In in the original uncut script,
the whole scene, the build up. It's the the bit when it's like,
do they do they speak English? Do your children speak English?
No, they will speak in English. So obviously he takes a seat
with this guy, his wife and the children, and he just brutally
tells him, you know, that, yeah, he killed my wife, he killed my
daughter kind of thing. And it just summarily destroys
the family. He shoots the two sons.
He shoots the wife and then gives the dad, now a widower and
a father of no one. Just moments, moments.
They're like process the horror that he's just witnessed before
he connects him to God's Wi-Fi as well.
Great bit of restraint there as well.
So we we see him like obviously position the guns.
Yeah. But we cameras laser focused on
on the the healthiest the drug Lords face.
We only get like a side a perspective wise of the everyone
slimmed over the dead in the chairs.
Yeah, yeah, second, second. Like we get like, what a subject
shot of that for a split second, and then we cut back onto his
face again wide. And he's he holds the gun up and
he hesitates just a second. Yeah.
And then he's like, yeah, pretty, pretty grim stuff.
And then see that's that's that's what so much of America
has a military industrial complex in this film has been
working towards Predator drones about flights across the border.
They've had kinetic operations. All of this so he could go and
kill a dude, wipe his family out really, right.
I mean. That initial obstacle, you know,
Yeah, that that initial obstacle and get the guy, Yeah, Blackhawk
flies them to the friggin border.
Yeah, yeah. Like, there's like, there's a
lot of money put into this, right?
It's a strong statement of intent.
If you were looking up at the skies from the border, it'd seem
like a Blackhawk flying across. Like, yeah, you'll see that
every day. Okie, dokie.
So the next day, Alejandro appears in Kate's apartment and
forces her at gunpoint to sign a statement attesting to the
entire operation was legal. That's an understatement.
This is horrible. So she's just stood on a
balcony, tapping away. A voice comes from inside the
apartment saying you should avoid standing on balconies for
a while, Kate. She comes inside.
He presents the papers. He holds her own service weapon
to her chin while she's like crying and trying to think of
what she going to do. She's already threatened to like
expose everything to to Josh Brolin.
I don't think there's any real risk of her following through
with that, to be honest. But we just haven't seen that
kind of gumption from the character.
But she's she looks utterly defeated.
She's like weeping, crying, screwing, crying up.
She signs the signs of papers and she has like.
It's like watching a fish, like taking out of water, like
flailing for its life, like on the ground as Alejandro leaves
and walks across the parking lot of her her building complex as
she pulls out her weapon again after having rebuilt it because
he stripped. He strips it as he's leaving.
She rebuilds it. She goes out to the balcony.
She she aims with it like a nine mill for still probably like 50
metres shot. It wasn't going to be really
likely to hit anyway. He turns around, stares her dead
in the eye, having already said to her like the line like this
is a land of wolves and you are not a wolf.
You should go. You should go to some small town
where the rule of law still exists kind of thing.
And he just looks at her dead in the eye.
She eventually like just like stares her down.
She kind of like takes the gun slightly off aim.
She then she just lowers it. She just looks utterly defeated.
And then he just turned around and keeps walking away.
And then she's literally this is like a this is one of the scenes
where they have shallow to the depth of field slightly.
You see her like out of focus in the background, just like face
erased, irrelevant. Like her.
Her romance is now ended. Just like what a waste.
Just used up. Just a person, just you just you
spit like that bit in the guns and never own.
Do you see what you've done? You've used up a good, a
perfectly good human being. It's like that.
Yeah. She's absolutely defeated.
Horrible, absolutely horrible. Great film.
Yeah. Horrible moments around final
final final takes on the film I guess man think I think I love
it slightly less than I did at the time.
I think a lot of my love for the film is carried by Denny
Villeneuve and his ever works. I think.
I think the tennis shirt of it all has kind of bugged me a
little bit too much this time around.
I. Think this is the third time
I've watched this from now. I think my opinion of it is
largely unchanged. I do love it, I think for
slightly different reasons, because I like now it more
because I see how fucking doomed it is as a film.
Like, see, a few years have gone by since I've watched it the
first time. The world is more doomed.
And it it holds up in a way that the film makers can be like,
yeah, it fucking told you so, you know, it's it's shot
beautifully. The cinematography is amazing,
the soundtrack, the score is, is something else.
It's an absolute fucking work of art.
On a absolute autism note, some of the gunfight and it's
brilliant. But it takes a lot of boxes of
things I think are really cool. And it's just a really great
tension piece. It keeps the tension ramping up
and ramping up and ramping up. The whole film.
There was some moments in it that are so beautifully
evocative. These kind of liminal situations
when you really feel like you're crossing over from one state to
another, from one. And I've mean that in a kind of
emotional or spiritual state rather than like a nation state.
These crossing the border scenes, the scene when they've
been Speaking of all the immigrants who've been picked up
and then they're getting bussed off and just the kind of, it's
that special kind of loneliness the film evokes.
You guys will fucking know this when they have a job or a duty
to do that starts before 90% of the people in the world are
fucking up. And it's this cold fucking
loneliness. And some of the scenes when it
begins and it's like it's, it's, it's a hostile kind of feeling
that like it's, it's, it's lonesome.
It's a lonesome film, despite it being full of people at times.
It's a very lonely movie. That's a really good point.
I think that's that's that's bang on.
I think I think you're absolutely right about the film
calling out a big I sold you. So on the state of the world, I
think I think on that in that regard, yeah, I think I think
they can kind of hold their their heads high.
I think think I've come at it with a bit a bit more baggage
than I probably should have done.
And I, and I think we're watching the sequel, I'd
probably get a lot more pissed. So what we don't see is how far
she's fallen and where she's fallen from.
We just kind of see, well, you see how far she's fallen.
We don't see where she's fallen from.
We've seen her with the lie that she starts the movie believing,
which is that she's on the side of good injustice working for
the FBI. And we see at the end of it that
she is irrelevant. Not not like damaged, not like
broken by the events or anything.
She's rendered irrelevant by the by the events that happened.
She's shown to be powerless. Her organisation is shown to be
ineffectual. And if you were to compare it
with the scene that we see at the very beginning of the movie,
the FBI all working together as a team, all on comms, all
wearing tactical gear, storing a house, working together, doing
on that crusade. She is left on her own wearing a
just a pale grey T-shirt, barely able to operate her service
weapon streaming, crying. I can bloody mess of a person
all alone who one eye Freddie's new way to be seen left bereft
in the wind. So I think I think this movie
could have said a bit more about the state of the world by kind
of underpinning her with some more values.
That's what, yeah. To me part of it feels like it's
more sort of documentary of her moral decay if you will.
We're not given a huge amount of back story, personal law or
whatever. We've made a bunch of of jokes
about fem cell behaviour earlier but.
Only because that's funny. To me, it's sort of implied that
she's someone who has given herself to her job so fully.
Like we we're told she's no private life.
She's not interested into any of that.
Possibly because she at some point believed that it was the
right thing to do. Not just gets shattered in the
end with parts of that we we've already we've we've been given
this already sort of jaded character.
And at the beginning, she's operating for the system, but it
has subsumed all her own identity already to some point,
which is see that it gets gets and she's made her job, her
personality to to a point which is breaks her completely to see
that that doesn't it doesn't matter what she does to anyone.
I think I think that's something that people in the military can
probably empathise with pretty well.
The idea that your identity, because your identity gets kind
of taken over and supplanted by by a new one.
A set of values that you might not be able to articulate before
you joined or especially is given to you in, you know, a
handful of words. Curriculum and discipline,
respect for others, integrity, loyalty that you then like make
as part of yourself. I think if the veil is lifted
and it's shown to be like not those things, I think there's
only two ways you can go, isn't it?
You have a crack or you race the suck, don't you?
And she, I think she cracks the thing.
That's the one thing that I think I struggle with.
And I'd be interested to get like emails from, from people
who've watched the movie and stuff to get their opinion.
Is as soon as it's made evident that the only reason she's
invited to the party at all is for the legal technicality to
support the CIA operating on US soil, she is giving it out.
Freddie says he'll back into the hill if they both leave and and
depart and through spending the works she's the one who says no
we're staying. And I don't get if she's staying
because she wants to keep tabs on them and keep it legal or if
she's staying because it'd be too much fucking nose to to be
the one responsible for ruining the OP by leaving.
She's afraid of that for like a career perspective, or she has
this weird big revenge crusade thing going on where she feels
like she has to prove herself to these guys and affect the real
change. Or she feels like if I don't go
over, the death and bloodshed we've seen so far will be for
nothing. I don't know.
I'd be interested to see what people think of that.
I found it really hard to pass. Like why she made an affirmative
decision to stay when she hadn't out.
Apart from like script writing dictates that when someone's at
the Louis, they have to make a positive action to get into the
third act, which is just some like background screen writing
stuff. What I think is, I think one of
the things that makes her not walk away is that she doesn't
want to turn her back on these motherfuckers.
Put your front and your back plates in man.
Yeah, that's true that she'd have a bit of a, you know, they
bit the target on my head. I don't know if they would like
out and out killer in the middle of the day, but I think she
would. She'd piss off some people,
Yeah. Yeah, and it is kind of a kind
of comes consumer roost at the end when she's straight up told
by Alejandro that she should go to a small town somewhere, you
know, because it's over from she's she's going to be, at
best, no longer protected by the US government, at worst erased
by the US government or people working in cahoots with it.
Right. Yeah, it's pretty grim.
It's a it's a pity, it's kind of disappointing that they made
another movie and they don't address what happened with Kate
unless they do. Let me know.
Yeah, well, I mean, she's not credited as the so I mean, it's
either going to be a Poochy died on the way back to his home
planet kind of thing. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I got a little sideways reference to the one
liberal who nearly. Got on the way, Roles, yeah.
Cool, should we? This is the more for the
comments. Should we do some categories?
Yeah, let's go to the categories.
All right, welcome back. So going to the categories for
this film, we are going to start up with casting.
So the the IMDb page for this show was a cast of 99.
So there's been so much research done into this.
They've even got a comprehensive list of the uncredited rules.
Now, the second film in a row that we've done that has a
connection of the staggeringly good Old West miniseries, the
English Kieran Haynes from The Sum of All Fears.
The last episode we did was in it, and so was Emily Blunt
playing the lead role of Cornelia Locke.
We all know her from such good show.
We all know her from stuff like Oppenheimer that we all want to
see on the same day as Bobby when we were self-employed and
did I'm drinking or maybe that was just me.
We've got him should have spot in foils war in 2003, an episode
in Poirot the remix series 2004 and she's off in a Hollywood
devil wears Prada, Charlie Wilson's war the Wolfman
adjustment Bureau rules coming up.
She's in disclosure there. That's currently in post.
This film may be a psyop to soft prepare humanity for the big
reveal that Ilama was are indeed real.
I might be wrong, I might not be wrong.
Oh, on that if Did you see the interview this week that Barack
Obama gave? No.
Regarding shit. He was asked about aliens and
Area 51, and the guy asked him like, so are aliens real?
And have you ever seen, did you get any secret briefings about
aliens during your time as president?
And Barry Obama started it by really offhandedly going,
they're real. But the idea that I didn't get
any, there's a conspiracy going on in Area 51 or anything that's
that maybe they kept it from the president.
But the way he goes, the real, it's so good.
Let me guess my Barack Obama, by the way.
Let me be clear, aliens are real.
I. Fucking.
Listen to that another part of the soft prepare preparation.
Of the software, I'll tell you what, this is not a conspiracy
theory podcast. Yet.
But yes, holy shit, I'm, I'm, I'm quite excited for that film.
Anyway, IMDb also tells us she was recently on on on a podcast
episode as a guest now tells us the podcast is called the search
for the silver lining. So you're seeing there's a
chance, right? There's a chance this point we
are fucked forgetting her as a guest.
I'm Emily Blunt and welcome to Adventures and Taurine, my
podcast about energy drinks. I'm I'm Here with my Husband
Jack Ryan from the TV show Jack Ryan.
I'm gonna peep in here and I feel like her character seems
like she drinks bang energy, not monster.
And I knocked my microphone out, some of my my headset out.
Right. You've, you've raised something
here. What energy drink would you
think Jack Ryan would would consume?
I want to say, man, I think Jack Ryan is a Boy Scout, right?
Yeah. So it's basic bitch.
He's Red Bull. He's Red Bull.
The. Way Red Bull.
Red Bull all. The sugar free one.
Maybe he sucks, either way he's not interesting.
Korea on the other hand, Power horse.
Power Horse by African Cup of Nations football over the year
Manual and bio. Yes.
Or. You go to Korea's offices of be
average full of those like half the icons of power Horse.
Belicio del Toro, an actor who needs no introduction, another
Wolfman alumnus. Yep, iconic as among others kids
sitting on car in Madonna's Laisla Bonita music video, the
barely comprehensible Fenster and the usual suspects Dr Gonzo
and fear and Loathan Frank, your four fingers and snatch shig of
our and both Part 1 and 2 of share because it'll be weird if
he was only in Part 1 and on Part 2 of us Guardians the
Galaxy and in Star Wars Episode 8, The Last Jedi is DJ.
Oliver. Can I say something and no one
will go on bad with me? Yeah.
DJs whole subplot in the last Jedi is along with the
investigate oriole aspects of episode 2 attack the clones,
right. It's it's the closest the live
action Star Wars universe, the EU or the new shit ass Disney
Canon got a thrill on movie content before and or came and
and or what everywhere and change everything.
And I do like that they had that little bit of a Shades of Grey
kind of thrillery bit in in The Last Jedi when he's like, oh, is
he the selling the selling the starships to both sides kind of
thing? You know, that was kind of
fucking cool. Don't join.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Don't try and get in. Yes, It was in Licence to Kill
Play and Dario, the youngest man to play a Bond film.
Yeah. And along with Che Guevara, he
also previously played Pablo Escobar.
And his most recent Hollywood appearance was One battler from
another. You've seen that right, Mike?
One battle after another. That was his most.
Yes. Oh, he's so good.
He's good. He's.
Brilliant in that he's he's wonderful.
Yeah. He's, oh, he's, he has.
He does all these great little mannerisms.
He's wonderful. He's the heart of the movie for
me. Get in.
I've got to say that film next bit of casting Gernie Hallock, I
mean Josh Brolin, known known as many of us as Stanos, he managed
to bring massive amounts of pyrthos to a character that
looked like an intimacy aid from Bad Dragon Limited.
I mean, he did, didn't he? The man, the man looks like AW
sex toy. He's just a big purple rib
nobler. And yet he just bestows so much
pathos on to on Thanos. I think it's brilliant.
As Korea began playing a current brand in Goonies, that's Goonies
and not Gooners. He was not goon maxing in a goon
cave. He's Sean, Austin's Big Brother.
That's right, yeah. Yeah.
And after our Goonies, he really TV maxed quite a bit.
Guest slots 21 jump St you had a guest slot on the highway to
Heaven, a show in which a probationary Angel sent back to
earth teams up with an ex cop in what may be one of the most
1980s concepts ever. March course 2000 he's in hollow
man alongside Kevin Bacon. Then he's in 2012, perfectly
cast as Young Agent Key and Men in Black 3 like.
Oh yeah, but. The casting that I think is
amazing because if you guys seen the photos of Tommy Lee Jones
when he was playing football for Harvard.
I haven't looked at it now. Google that shit, man, Susie.
Because. Because it's uncanny.
Holy crap. It's uncanny, right?
You speak loud, isn't he? He does is.
He's got. I didn't know he was packing
that jaw game. The jaws on real man, it's like,
yeah, so the similarity, it's it's perfect.
Casting one absolute shot. Unbeaten team in 1968.
Hold those to my camera because I can't be bothered to edit and
properly later. There we go.
Cool. Peak male performance in
general. He he's cop maxed a lot.
He's been lots of like any crime films in Harold Weiss, American
gangster Murabuki was in in the Valley of Elah, played a Gurney
Halleck obviously in Dune. Both of them.
For a split second there, sorry, let's go back a second.
When you said he played Gurney Halleck in Dune, both of them.
I was like, I got a minute. This is Patrick Stewart erasure.
Oh my God, he played Gurney Halleck in both of the Danny
villain of Dunes and that was it.
He's not been in the other ones. The mood moods, I think so.
Capital of Love play. Daniel Kaluya, great performer,
did so much really great British TV work including Cycloville
where our first Storm is the character team.
Brilliant. The Fades, which is fucking
amazing. The Fades was so good, which ran
for one season and I think I want to say 202010, but his
drama are involving a concept in which all of the souls of dead
people haven't been able to kind of like ascend to heaven because
of all the concrete and shit built around them.
And then there's like bad shit happening and it's really
fucking cool. Of course then he goes into
Hollywood kick us to Sakari were relatively early in his career.
He then does obviously get out and Black Panther widows the
same year as that played Fred Hampton in Judas and the black
Messiah in 2021. The film right it's it's stacked
with prior performances of real historical figures.
I mean, Del Toro played Shane Pablo Brolin played Wild Bill as
well as doing voice work as George Washington and he did
George W Bush in 2008 W We're going to add clueless
performance of Fred Hampton to this to this bag like it's we're
moving on with the with the speed and direction of a Delta
Force team crossing over the board.
Us to, to to to annihilate people.
John Bernthal, dirty cop played by the highest profile airsoft
in all of Hollywood. Hashtag our guy.
What the fuck? Yeah, John Bernthal, what a best
guy, the the best Punisher over any and all media and I'll fight
people in the street for that. A man who when asked his opinion
of members of the alt right and white supremacist wearing the
Punisher skull, said quite succinctly, fuck them.
And he's also a podcast host like us.
That's natural podcast system. So there is a chance.
There is a chance, narrow as it is, but there's a chance
there's. Still a chance.
Yeah, IMDb. He's got his first credit as the
lead in the film in 2002 called Mary Slash Mary, a film with a
following description. Strapping lads, this sounds
fucking mental. Money is a young man with a
serious Madonna slash whore complex.
And a host of manias related to sexually transmitted disease.
Manny's neurosis manifest as a pair of quick talk in 1950s
gangsters who fill his ears with poisonous propaganda.
Whom amongst us hasn't had this kind of mental state at some
point? Doesn't that sound mint that?
Was shit buddy. It was super cock.
You go down for a long time, buddy.
Oh Jesus Christ see how following following this guest
bots and law and order from Lieutenant without trace Boston
legal. As for you say say Miami he he
really tore up like the early mid 2000s prime name starts with
guest appearances. He was well cast as Al Capone
and Night at the Museum, Battle of the Smithsonian and another
another historical figure played back from this.
Absolute, absolute peak. Yeah, he just kind of goes in
more like Copper and Thriller Maxing again, Rampart, Harry's
Law will for Wall Street. He's he's in the accountant and
the accountant too. He's the brother of Ben Affleck.
That's right, I I assume he's like the non autistic one?
I haven't watched like either of the films but.
I've watched the second one and it didn't review very well, but
I watched the first one and I quite enjoyed it.
Yeah, yeah, right. He plays he plays the burnout
bad guy, but but not not autistic so he's looking after
his brother kind of thing. Yeah, like as I saw people on
our slash tactical gear saying that is lured out in the
promotion stills for the sequel look legit and tight.
So it's like it's it's it's that's the power of being an ass
off from Hollywood, baby. Yeah.
And obviously he was. He was huge in that Walking Dead
and Rory here leaving the best for last at the Netflix
Punisher. So good.
Perfect. No notes.
No fucking notes. Fury as well.
Fury was fucking brave. Yeah, Kunas in Fury, right?
He was brilliant. He was he was in that's right.
And he was in his and hers recently on on Netflix, which is
actually a perfect example of one of those Netflix shows which
has the really shallow depth of field thing really pisses me
off. But John Bonfield's great in it
though. Hell.
And so it's Pablo and so it's Pablo Srina.
So go get. That Oh my God yeah going into
Jeffrey Donovan who plays Steve Forson with you and by the way
the tactical guitar and gun fucker end of the Internet in
which I dwell is obsessed people people, people love this guide
was suspicious and kind of erotic level like it's it's kind
of wild. He's been canonised by the
public discourse based just on this film has made a proxy for
Sergeant made from Mike Vining the the legend of Delta force.
He was also a podcast host now, but there's been no fucking
chance even when people are given the films equipment and
tactics shit on on Reddit and stuff.
Steve Steve forcing gets a pass as well as the star.
He's been a huge that guy for cop shows.
He did homicide life on the street.
He was a lead in the NYPD cop show The beat back in 2000.
Spot and say say Miami he's played two of the Kennedys.
He played Bobby Kennedy and J Edgar not a film about the guy
from Bosch and John F Kennedy in 2016 is LBJI thought that was
pretty cool staying on the quote and quote good guy American side
casting we've got Victor GABA was Dave Jennings major film
appearances including Argo and Titanic TV performances.
He had a long run alias. I think that's what most people
from like watching Sky TV in the early 90s what when they were
unemployed sorry fun employed. There's a difference.
Would would remember him from just Alias Maxson. 2 episodes of
Alias a day. Get it?
It's always steal your sandwiches here unless you in
case you in case you do want to mention it, but you also play
plays Frazier's Butler in one of the sort of Frazier.
That's right, that's right, that's right.
He did like guess. Scott guest slots in a Kung Fu
legend, continues Sleepy Hollow. He was in the Outer Limits
reboot using blue bloods, ugly Betty using arrow.
He's done so much. Just the real real of that guy
work like he's. He's also the guy in charge of
admissions at Harvard in Legally Blonde.
Holy. Shit, that's right.
My God, Interesting, interesting casting, man.
Go to the section weapons free when we talk about guns and gear
and all this shit. This film, believe it or not, is
really polarising in in like, you know, the gun fucker and
ghetto discourse on on the on lines, the traffic jam firefight
source, and everyone can can agree that it's absolutely
class. Like I said, I keep saying the
films like a nonstop tension piece, right, And after all this
build up of tension leading the explosive, yet measured in
fucking brief release of this, it's a highlight.
It's an early highlight of the film, but it gets guns wrong at
times, right? That's the biggest fucking
syllable. Did you notice that Alejandro's
like weapon changes multiple times?
No, no, no. In firing scenes.
Long type of autism, Rory. Not fair enough.
You you got you got a Land Rover autism.
I got the weapon IP autism. I've got his classical getting a
metro network autism. Infrastructure autism.
I am really. Getting into multi static sonar
detection. At the moment I do not have time
for handle. Well, good job I'm fucking here,
isn't it? So in firing scenes is used in
the hacker and cock MP5A3 with a suppressor and optical sight
like correctly attached to the rail.
In non firing scenes for some reason is used in the MP5 SD 3
the the integrally suppressed 1 with this optical sight fucking
attachment get you escaped from talk of scavenger.
Build out my fucking key to a man.
I've got no idea why they did this.
Maybe like a shortage of the weapon for other scenes.
Maybe they just had it for one day.
I know the hat because like I know they had the the FLIR
camera for just one day for like the night vision shots.
But yeah, that's fucking wild to me.
Like you can clearly see the scenes when he's using a
different gun with fucking in point site taped onto it.
And like that will fly in escape from talk of me.
That's that's get get your fallout shit out of my keno.
We'll see lots of AR15M4 type rifles and carbines and in in
the hands of the quote UN quote good guys.
So you see the Mexican Federal is using the old school M4A ones
for the clamshell grips and carry handles because carry
handle gang get the fuck out of here with the EO tax man.
Actually don't put Matt Griff has running an ex fucking very
expensive rifle. It's a fucking Daniel Defence
M4A1 because he thinks he's Johnny Big bollocks.
That's a 2 1/2 thousand dollar rifle boom stock.
So it's clear you sure that he's he's the Johnny Big Bollocks who
gets to bring his own one from home and the rest of the guys?
From home value as it gets older.
Yeah. Cheap 400 LB rifle.
Yeah, and what one of the one of the Delta Force guys for some
reason, because he's because he's a free think I run out of
fucking robot like the rescue fools has a hegron cock.
G36CI guess he thinks that like Nate or STANAG magazines on
important and cross compatibility of ammunition
isn't important and cool range of AKS cartel hitman uses an
AK1O3 That thought was pretty cool.
There's a really cool Blake and you miss it of like a Smith and
Wesson 76 submachine gun, which I thought was actually called
Gustav M45 when I saw it in like in like a guy's a guy's vehicle
and and I clearly got that wrong.
How do 50 Hail Marys this morning and hit myself really
hard? So much you're like flattening
yourself. Like like that guy and the Da
Vinci Code. Oh my.
God, that's sort of like, look at it, mirror what?
I do call myself a twat. May I maxima Copa?
Yeah, so. Yeah, it's like.
You know, we've I'm sorry I have to interrupt your gun.
No, please, please. Every time AG30 pops up in pop
culture for some reason you just know immediately that the guy
wielding it is a massive cunt. Like what did my service weapon
do to you people? That is actually a good point
really, isn't it? I mean.
It's across everything, it's even in Doctor Who all the
annoying UNIT fucks that get into everyone's ways or every
stupid space militia has AG 36 and I'm just sat here like first
of all why is this gun everywhere and why is it always
the cunts? I think, I think Jason Statham
uses one in Ghosts of Mars, and I think he's a bit of a cunt in
that film too. So yeah, you've got a point,
actually, trivia trivia that I really enjoyed.
So Emily Blunt was so sick from food poisoning while filming in
Mexico that she required IV fluids.
But it takes just to make it through our scenes.
That's fucking dedication of the bit, right?
But also it shows once again the film just punished the actress
as well as the character quite quite brutally.
The the Wild Pony bar around NM for is no more.
That's the bar when the weather went to get, you know, shagged
by the Punisher. In 2015, a fatal gang shooting
occurred between the Bandidos and Poor Boys outlaw motorcycle
clubs. The bar was close to some time,
but it was late. I renovated to become the
Horseshoe, which is not a bar but rather a public meeting
place. I love these like open source
things and IMDb. Yeah.
The iconic look for Steve Forsings, specifically the
chunky smiling I wear glasses and unassumingly dirty
appearance was modelled after William Bill F Cronin the Third,
a real life retired Delta Force operator who served on Norman
Schwarzkopf security detail so not make violent everyone says
question of the team. Where the hell are we putting
Columbo into this film? Where can we jump it?
A Falcon? I think he's too pure and too
good for this film. But we've got to find a way to
fucking fit them in. Yeah, wow.
And right here we go. When she goes to, is a white
pony, it's called. The.
Wild Pony. Wild pony, yeah.
Wild pony. Yeah.
She she just got served by like a really, really old geriatric
bartender. That's the guy.
That's the guy, isn't it? That's the guy.
I really couldn't see him being the one of the kind of law
enforcement power brokers kind of bringing her in for the for
the meeting. And I couldn't see him obviously
being anyone of the cartel site I like because he's just too
fucking decent of a dude. Yeah.
Anybody have any stand out quotes from the film that they
like? God, that's a really good
question actually, You know, it's, it's not super quotable.
I. Struggled.
Yeah, there's, there's there's literally penicillin, Toro
saying this is a land of wolves and you're not a wolf God.
Yeah. What else is there?
Nothing will make sense to your American years, and you will
doubt everything that we do. But in the end, you will
understand. Like, oh, no, man, I don't.
I don't love the dialogue in this movie.
You should move to a small town where the rule of law still
exists. You will not survive here.
You're not a wolf. And this is the land of wolves.
Now that's the full quote. Yeah.
That's cool. Yeah, it's not much.
I mean, like, you know what, it's interesting.
I mentioned earlier on they they took out like 90% of Alejandro's
dialogue. All the cool, cool to still
Alandro. Like he would have just been a
quota machine I imagine. Yeah, it's it's it's definitely
doesn't have film less. It doesn't really have like a
lot of lines that go super hard. It's not like an eminently
eminently, yet it's not again, you run dialogue from the slum
of the pub. You mates kind of thing, you
know. The only one I like that isn't
Alejandro is Kate on the initial meeting going what's her
objective and then Matt grinning like a real shit eating grin on
her face and goes to dramatically overreact.
Yeah. Wow cool, I'll write that up as
the command name. Shall I fucking speed up the 12
knots for comprar environment surface?
OK, Jesus. Yeah, I think, I think, I think
that's probably one of the one, one of the more colour lines of
the film. Be honest Sonia that any that
any quotes impress you. Not really, I've had this on the
back of my head head from earlier.
Well I've been wondering if this film would possibly still work
if it had sound but none of the dialogue.
That's actually because a lot of the is just the soundtrack and
gun noises, and much of the suspense is not from dialogue
but just the soundtrack. And when it comes to to all the
tactical stuff, it's all just hand signs and gestures and
pointing anyway, so the the dialogue isn't really needed
there either. Phil have talked about making
Dune Part 2 to a silent film in the this is like in the press
run up to it and everything. Yeah, obviously, obviously it
couldn't have been. I mean, it's a film that's
famous for having one really good speech, for example.
He doesn't like, he doesn't, he doesn't think that film should
be a medium which is given to by dialogue.
He thinks that dialogue is overtaken film and has ruined
the art form as a visual art form.
And he has. And obviously he would love to
do probably a silent film if he had the power to.
I think. I think it's a really
interesting point. It pretty much works.
Yeah, definitely, definitely. It's actually really fucking
good. I like that.
I would really watch that. Yeah, I would.
I would watch the photo. Definitely have you guys.
I love doing this shit right? Have you guys seen the Steven
Sudeburg cut of Red as the Lost Ark?
No, I have not. He recuts the film in black and
white and he removes all the soundtrack apart from any re
cuts it with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's score from The
Social Network. And the film still makes perfect
sense. Now, I don't know if that's
because partially because I know that from like the back of my
hand, but also the visual storytelling of it works like
the emphasis put on the right objects.
You know what the Mcguffins are, You know what they're trying to
find. You know who the fucking bad
guys are. You know who the good guys are.
You understand the relationships because people are very broad in
the film. Yeah.
It's amazing how well it works and it's a testament to Douglas
Lookum's like cinematography as well that even when they've
taken all the colour out, the images are so striking and it
looks absolutely astounding. Yeah, I highly recommend that.
He's hosting it for free, I think on on his website.
That's. Fucking class, that's so.
Cool. Worth a look?
Yeah. Fascinating.
Got. It we've got a the the Ding
Chavez Award for missed opportunity in the film.
What's the most missed opportunity?
The biggest missed opportunity this film has Go go go poise.
Man, serious answer is development for Kate, 100%, I
think. Yeah, I think I was going to say
like a fun answer, man, this is not a fun film.
There's something there's not like that much fun you can have
with it. Especially right now while
watching the news. Yeah, exactly.
There, there is a bit, I don't know if you noticed it.
This isn't a missed opportunity. It's something I noticed in the
detail when they're having that meeting about the the bank money
laundering sting they did before they go to that, that again,
it's like a really plain office. It's a random building.
There's ATV playing on a wall and the news story is about a
massive uptick to funding for ICE.
And let's think all the like recruit like 10,000 more ice
officers or something. That's like fucking hell, man.
That's like a bit too real. Too real.
I mean, you've got to think that ICE is more funded right now
than the Canadian Defence Force. Oh it's crazy.
That's mad. I was I was blown away when I
watched them in episode was season 2 or 3 of Bosch.
And there's some ICE agents appear in it briefly and they're
just wearing like blue jeans, white T-shirts and like black
plate carriers with ice on them. And it's like they're not,
they're not like wearing all like the face coverings and
shit. They're not, they're not like in
in, in fucking green. And it's just wild.
It's like, but when, when you think how like, I mean the
protagonist, one of the, well, I guess the jutor agonist of
Machete was an ICE agent fucking the fucking good gal or the one
of the good guys. You know, she, she, she, she
was, I'm sure she was either an ICE agent like a CDP agent.
ICE started like in 2003, I think is really new
organisation. It was.
It was fun because like the wound up that got rid of INS and
replaced it with ice. Yeah, yeah.
It's interesting. So obviously Bosch and this
film, obviously this film came out in 2015.
So Presidential Race was obviously written and and
produced during the final years of the Obama administration.
Bosch came out like in the right in the middle of the Obama
administration and at that time there's a lot of news stories
about the humongous amount of deportations that were happening
under that that administration. I'm not going to attend.
It's like a new issue that is just sprung up overnight, like
like that's been happening for a really, really long time.
The differences is that the people enforcing it and doing it
were like hiding their face. They weren't stopping people in
the street. They weren't shooting and
killing people. They weren't necessarily always
splitting up families. There was a bit of that,
definitely, but there was generally like a bit of a due
process going on with people. Yes, it were detained.
Yes, people would deport people deployed, but that kind of is
just like the system I guess working to a certain extent.
I don't want to get like super deep into that issue.
But yeah, prescience that the humongous influx of funding is
that particular organisation is is got like a little bit of a
lamp shade in this movie is really small detail.
Yeah, yeah, I guess. I guess that is the one three
letter agency that doesn't get any real input into this film.
Yeah, there were guys I've credited in the film as ICE
agents. Yeah.
So then obviously the guys handling the yeah.
So that's the guys that they speak to in Tucson at that that
depot where all those coach, all those coaches are at.
Yeah. So it's a mix of CBP and ICE at
the the kind of truck stop area, Yeah.
But yeah, we don't dig into
that. I guess I'd be really interested
to see and this would really pin Taylor Sheridan's colours to the
mast here. If if they make a third one and
ice are involved in it, what that that what format takes,
because I would I would. I don't know his.
I think he's one of those people who's quite truly tries to keep
his politics to himself and doesn't doesn't doesn't say what
he believes. In my experience, those people
tend to be fucking maggots, right.
So, so I wouldn't be surprised. I don't want to accuse him.
If anyone's got like fucking evidence of the country, that's
fine, sends it in, whatever. But.
Answers that, of course what? Yeah, all I would say is if I
can, if it walks like a duck and quite like a fucking duck, man.
I mean, we're going to do it right if like Sicario 3 comes
out and fucking Jason Aldean sings the theme tune, sure.
And it's just a rework of Try that at a small town.
Yeah, fuck it out. President Trump, please make
enemy real. I want to go one piece.
I want to know how it feels. Yeah, OK.
Oh my God, yeah. The the proof will be in the
fucking pudding. What's that?
We have the this was one that Mike has been running for a few
episodes now, and I think that's going to be pertinent here.
The The Jack Ryan's shopping list category, The one item,
thing or act in the film that humanises a character who's
otherwise a hard bitten part of the military industrial complex.
Indian Creek cigarettes for me for for Kate it's the brand
created for the movie that she that she starts tabbing away.
Clearly she used to be a smoker has now fallen hard on being a
smoke again. Straightaway classic someone's
someone's not looking after themselves a like a cosmic you
will for the self destruction that she goes through by
insisting she gets themselves keeps herselves involved in this
this whole thing. The Biggins as well.
Like the proper super king length on that.
The real like fucking cowboy killers.
I mean she doesn't fuck around to be fair like.
Yeah. Sunny, how about yourself?
Anything this film that particularly humanises these
otherwise badasses? Hard asses mean cunts.
Not really, no. You, I mean previously you when,
when talking about weapons, you've given us the opposite of
that. Yeah.
It's like someone bringing their Gucci gear, special kid
particular own gun just serves to to basically dehumanise him
further. It's very far point.
But that's that's apart from the cigarettes, that's all all we
get. Yeah, the cigarettes are pretty
much like the only kind of like, like it's kind of it's kind of a
link to to like a normal nonviolent life, I guess.
Very, very good assessment, dude.
Most egregious oversell of the MIC, Most egregious oversell and
build industrial complex in this fucking film.
This is going to be a doozy, guys.
That's cool. I don't 100% know yet.
There's a few bits I think. Do they need a Blackhawk to get
to El Paso from? They've already flown from a
Look Air Force Base to the nearby Air Force Base.
It is a bit of a flex, right? Yeah, some providing.
It's not providing the Overwatch or anything.
They're not talking to it. It's not, it's not, it's not
tooled up. It's just used as a it's a
pretty, pretty expensive fucking omnibus.
They're always using it to fly really fucking low.
Yeah, Are they? Yeah, I was under the impression
that they were trying to give you the feel that they are
actually trying to operate. Low Mexican radar.
I don't think it's in Mexico though.
I think it's only on the border. I think it's how they get to the
border, isn't it? I mean, maybe they don't get
picked up by Mexican read or anywhere like just just because
we don't know how much, we don't know how much kind of hand and
glove work in the US really has with the Mexicans at this point,
right? I mean, there's obviously some
degree on like a kind of federal level, there's no real work
together on the state level based in the fact the Mexican
state police are trying to kill them.
But is there a point when the state level collaboration drops
and maybe people in the air defence network don't fucking
know that there's American Blackhawks flying dangerously
close to the border, probably with the fucking beacons turned
off and it's fucking real. The beacons are turned off on.
That's a good one, man. I think, I think a bit of an
overreach is that like the literally like using a fucking
Predator drone, just a circle around that that one guy's house
in in the US waiting for him, waiting for the bull back to
Mexico. It's like he's going to see it.
He's going to see a drone served in his fucking house.
It's a lovely clear day, you know?
And it's like, yeah, you don't need what's clearly a very
fucking high altitude drone to get these shots.
I mean quad copper technology wasn't what it is today, but you
could let Read just have someone near his house with binoculars.
Theme medical point We were watching last night that they
make the assessment that he's heading straight back to Mexico
like really quickly. They see him leave his house,
get to his car and they're like he's going back to Mexico and
it's like he couldn't go to the fucking corner shop.
Like I think you've Easter 5 should be.
I think you've jumped to a conclusion there, guys.
It's a really good point actually.
It's like I love the idea that like he goes out to buy some
tabs, but like they think he's going to Mexico.
So they're like roll this whole operation and they stop looking
at the predator drone feed. They're just like hand it back
to what? Whatever, whatever, nerds flying
that out of whatever fucking shipment container somewhere and
then they all like brewing a New Mexico ready.
He's like goes back to his house 10 minutes in or the pack of
cigarettes, like hey baby, got the tabs.
And a sausage roll from Greg's. A sausage roll from Greg's.
I love it. But is, is the, is the Predator
drone really an overreach? I mean, you, you've, you've said
we didn't have quadcopter drones everywhere 10 years ago.
And like 2 years ago, three years ago we got drones being
used in DC to survey protests. Yeah, I mean, if we'd seen maybe
Ice Cube, right click on the Predator, Jordan say Commandeer
drone. And it's a passive over sell or
if I scoop right clicks on his car and it comes up going to
Mexico. Sure.
You're just mad that your government issued laptop does
not have that right click option.
Maybe mine does. Oh, that sounds.
Just basically the same thing. Would you like to hear what
viewers of Sakari You have to say on the website letterbox.com
for Notes from the Peter Gallery?
All right, we're going to start with the half star reviews.
Someone opinions nothing, literally nothing.
Someone else adds. Nothing ever happens.
And whenever something finally does happens, I hate it.
Whenever I Google Sicario this movie stupid ass comes up
boring, says Someone fundamentally charm this film
that'll end up inspiring men to be into the things that fails to
criticise. I agree.
That is a thought I've had thinking about one of the
questions we've discussed regarding other films, which is
how would this film be received in the wardroom?
I think people would get the wrong end of the stick from it,
yeah. Three stars.
Had to watch it for class instead of Napoleon Dynamite.
Hashtag boring. Two stars.
Evil Dennis Villeneuve 2 stars. Wasted two hours of my life. 4
1/2 stars. Imagine this movie but Benicio
does the voice from usual suspects.
So incredible. Someone just gives a 4 1/2 star
of you and goes yes, I forgot about the bit where Benicio Del
Toro gives John Bernthal extremely violent.
Oh this is you Mike, this is you.
If you want to feel like out of breath the whole time through,
watch this Station. Marks is truly a great tension
piece. Like I said, absolute cinema.
Wish Johnny Boy was in more scenes other than getting wet
willied. I'm glad.
I'm glad people are noticing the work, really.
Taylor Sheridan, if you see this, please write something for
Emily Blunt and let me play her daughter.
Someone just says holy moly for half stars and then the big hit
and five star ones. I still need to watch the second
film, but I just know it won't come close to this masterpiece.
You're probably right there. Patrick Bloom, from what I've
heard doing this movie rips. Dude, I want a cigarette so bad.
Emily Blunt as the audience surrogate bug and absolutely
amazing. Everyone shut the fuck up, but
he showed Del Toro was being cool as fuck right now.
Four stars, perfect review, 0 notes.
We're close to the end of the episode now with you guys.
I think there's really one thing left to do.
Check. Is this film pro or anti the
Central Intelligence Agency? Incredibly, anti.
Incredibly. This film is, I think, yeah, I
don't think this franchises, this is really weird example, I
think where I think I have to watch the second film properly
to kind of get the whole thing. But I think, I think this film
says, hey, this is fucked up and bad.
And I think the second film's going to go actually, this is
really cool. Yeah, like it's going to go from
fucked up and bad to jacked up and Rod, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, big time. Yeah, but you know what, we've
mentioned Call of Duty a few times.
Just reminds us there is one question we need to ask about
this film because we've gone over the fact, obviously you
mentioned that it would be popular in the mess, but would
go down for maybe the wrong reasons.
Yeah. How does film fare as a video
game and in hard mode? It can't be a first person
shooter. OK, yeah, man.
That's a hard mode question right there.
It's easy to say Call of Duty with a Mexican film.
I go, you know. Yeah, you, yeah, that's, that's
the easy 1, isn't it? You are playing a like a
tactical squad shooter and you are like one of the guys and you
have the MVGS and you're going for the tunnels and that's all
really cool. Yeah, I think I think the next
best thing, wow. It's probably if you stick with
Kate as your protag, I think. I think it's a retro style or
art point and click adventure game.
Police quest or something like that.
So yeah, you, I mean, obviously she's just been swept at by
events, but she needs to try and figure out what's going on, I
guess. Yeah, but you're, but you're in
a bit of a weird rock and a hard place where the actual story is
like, what's what's the crack of the task force you've been
assigned to? More.
More than What's the crack of the cartel?
Yeah, that's actually cool. I like that.
I think, I think what it does do is it allows you to have a story
about the task force that gives short shift to the cartel
because the cartels the focus because you do as much it that
means that the the the the border crossing gunfight is like
a cutscene. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess that
would be it. I don't know how you would do
it. I think you would be Kate, and I
think it would just be, yeah, Point, click, talk to everybody.
Smoke some tabs. Smoke some.
Tabs. Yeah, have sex with a Punisher.
Convince people to talk to you. Yeah, you do all that and then
yeah. And it would be like pretty much
on rails like like all because arts and vegetables games kind
of were. It's fucking cool.
Like the Westwood Blade Runner game?
Yeah. I'd be good as shit.
I'd be good out man. Have you got an idea for a video
game? I think first of all, I would
have come with Kate as well as your playbook character.
Cool, I can see the the pixelated thing working.
I think I would put more of a focus on, let's dramatically
call it, keeping her alive. Yeah.
You could lean into the into the whole having a having a health
bar thing because she's get she's likely to get in that
situation. You're likely to have like
exhaustion, anxiety problems and all sort of things and you could
just play with with first person effects on that a lot.
Fuck, I want to change my answer.
Yeah, this is This is a survival horror game.
Yeah, Yeah. I would still put it in the
basically perspective wise, gameplay wise, I would put it in
the first person shooter perspective from the gameplay.
But you don't to get and you don't get to do the shooting
part. It's just all the keeping Kate
alive and not. And you could put in a dozen
dead ends for her that lead to her being shot by the squad
she's been assigned to us. Me.
That's really cool. Yeah, Jesus.
It's really insightful. Holy shit, that's fucking
amazing, man. You see, I think we're wasted on
podcasts. I think we should just start
like pitch and write the answer the video game industry because
because what we don't have is what don't have is what we don't
have any be added white dudes yet pitching ideas the video
game industry right. You know, yeah.
Great, honest. Well, I think it's time to were
call and nights tonight's assessment of the 2015 mega
blockbuster Sicario. So the last thing for us to say
is actually for assault. What's our next episode, Mike?
It is. Season 2.
Episode 5 is 1993's The Fugitive starring Harrison Ford.
Finally, we are popping our Harrison Ford cherry here on
three present dudes after teasing it for so long.
Going for one of the real brass rings that we've talked about
previously, one of the films that we've felt we've had to
spin ourselves up to the hit, one of the really, really hard
targets. So we're hoping to see you for
the next one or two weeks time then until then we've been.
Clear. Yeah.