Drug War

No bullshit guys, this film is all business.  It is extremely rare to find a movie that resists the usual tropes like a love interest, a long lost family connection, a tortured past, etc.  This one does away with most of that shit and focuses like a laser beam on the driving plot of cops trying to take down a major drug ring.

Just because this is some lean meat with virtually no fat doesn’t mean it’s realistic exactly.  For instance Captain Zhang, who’s in charge of the sting operation, snorts two lines of coke in order to gain the trust of some dude and so that he’ll set up a meeting with his supplier.  That scene is intense because you can see the Captain is struggling real hard to fight off the effects of the coke and remain in character.  I’m pretty sure cops don’t do this in real life but holy shit does it make for some great cinema.

Another really cool aspect is that there are no breaks over the couple of days that this takes place.  It starts with a drug manufacturer crashing his car into a store front and it never stops after that.  Captain Zhang takes up the case after just completing an undercover bust.  Like as soon as he shits out the drugs that were stashed in his rectum from the previous operation he then goes into the next room to start on the big case that the movie’s about.  The Captain and his crew work all day and through the multiple nights to infiltrate the ring and attempt to bring it down. 

And you’re with them every step of the way on this thing.  They set up meetings, tail suspects, stakeout locations, etc.  And it all ends with a massive fucking shootout in front of an elementary school.  You never leave the cops’ sides or get derailed by some really movie-ish crap.  It’s all about taking these bad guys down and nothing else.

Everything about this picture is impressive.  The discipline it takes to craft something like this is incredible.  It’s also ballsy.  If you take away the usual clichés that are employed to have the audience connect with characters and situations you run the risk that people won’t get invested in the film.  But I found myself caring about everything just as much as I normally would have.  It still worked.

So few movies are like this (that aren’t documentaries).  In fact I’m really struggling to think of some examples that are similar.  David Fincher’s Zodiac was kinda like this where he presented the infamous case without a ton of interpretation.  He pretty much just states the facts.  Ok, Fincher points to who he thinks the killer was but I think he still leaves enough room for some doubt.  The only other good example I can think of is The X-Files.  After I reviewed that series’ first feature I continued to watch it and dug that most of the episodes are no-nonsense.  They concentrate on the X file at hand and spend the entire show solving it without getting sidetracked.

This is a rare and badass creature.  Admittedly as I was watching I wasn’t a hundred percent sold on it but the ridiculous ending pushed me over the top.  And the more I thought about it in the days afterward the more I liked it.  If you start this one I think you’ll find it’s hard to stop because one thing keeps leading to the next until it’s all over. 

There’s a drug war out there.  You wanna see what it’s like to take place in that war?  Check it out.