Are vigilantes reluctant heroes taking up arms to defend their communities? Or men of violence looking for a cause in which to fight? Can a band of local activists protect the people against a corrupt government? Or is an self-appointed institution always doomed, by its very nature, to be guilty of the same crimes it is founded to eliminate? Where does the greatest threat to a popular movement come from - the personal failings of a charismatic leader who can satisfy, but only for a moment, the people's desire for a saviour, or in the slime-ball sellouts who would replace him? These questions are deftly posed by 'Cartel Land', a documentary about the drug trade that focuses on the odd right-wing Minutemen of southern Arizona, who seem to feel it necessary to patrol the Mexican border for reasons unapparent, and the Atodefensas of central Mexico, a self-defence force fighting the drug cartels out of a self-evident desire for mere survival but which might possibly be just a new cartel in the making. The only certain conclusion from Matthew Heiman's bleak, compelling film is that the war on drugs is a war that can only be lost.
Review of Cartel Land
