Sicario (2015) — "You will not survive here. You are not a wolf. And this is the land of wolves now."

Weary waiting. You're not American. What do you work for? Now? I go or upset, get your clipping out.

He works for anyone who will turn him on us. Don't ever point a weapon of me again, Socario. Hello everyone, and welcome to the Culture cast. I am your host, Chris Dashu, and I'm joined by my two good friends all the way from the West Coast, though he would probably call it the best coast. He is the host of Richard Adams's paranormal Bookshelf.

Your friend of mine, Richard HadAM. We're in a world of wolves now, Chris, and you're not a wolf. I'm a wolf. Thank you, h And also joining us from West Texas, your friend of mine. He's the professor.

He's the professor of Media and Communications over there, a Texas tech doctor David Pearl Mutter. Well again to both of you, thank you for let me join you. He gets to say doctor before his name. We don't that means it's official. I mean unless we're talking to him, in which case we do say doctor before.

That's true. He requires it, Doctor Pearl Mutter. He's one of those guys. Everybody's got to know you're a doctor, all right on this episode of the Culture Cast. I guess we're continue or going back a little bit because we just talked about Heller High Water, So we're going back to the first Taylor Sheridan film of the American Frontier trilogy.

Richard, you didn't need to see the first one. This is well, this is the first one. Technically we saw the second one, which is Heller high Water. The film we're gonna be talking about on this episode is not that film. The film we're gonna be talking about is Cikario so Cicadio is directed by Denis Villeneuve, written by Taylor Sheridan, and it stars Emily Blunt, Benisio del Toro, Josh Brolin, and several other people.

But you know, I mean, Daniel Caluia is there for a minute. John Burnhal is there because this was before the MCU found something for him to do. And it is all about Emily Blunt's character, an FBI agent who is brought in on a special ops mission to bait out a Mexican drug lord in the hopes of reunifying the drug trade in Mexico under one banner so that the United States can better control it. Am I right? I think so that's kind of what I think.

Yeah, I think so so yeah, So David, I'm very curious. I'm going to give you the floor first, hy Cicicadio, and what did you think of the film? Well, I have a couple of reasons. First, Taylor Sheridan has definitely become an institution, probably the most famous living writer, auteur, Yellowstone, Landsman, bunch of other series. He bought the six six six to four to Six's Ranch, which is not far from here, So he's certainly extremely famous in West Texas.

But I think nationally, you know, as somebody who really respects screenwriting, and I know great screenwriters. I'm so honored to know great rich Richard HadAM. You don't have a lot of people from the screenwriting ranks who become a global icon, and he has achieved, like I guess, everybody's dream in the world of films. So I just think in terms of like his works, that this was his first I don't know whether it was first written screenplay, probably not, but like this was his first produced I believe screenplay. And so the empire of Taylor shared and began with this what I considered to be an excellent movie.

Which is the second point, which is I think this is an extremely well written movie. I want to hear. Obviously we have not we never pre discussed, so I'm going to find out live whether you think I'm completely wrong. But I do think for my students this is very well written, incredible direction by Dennis Villeneuve. The details, the always I'm always interested in the props.

We'll talk. I want to talk about the props, like the guns and the trucks and the just the little details of the movie. So I just think it's it's one where you can appreciate and then going back to what you started out, I guess I'll end up arguing a little bit contrarian about like who's the star of the movie. Who the movie? Really centers on what the movie is about, And I think great movies we can have discussions where we have disagreements on necessarily what the point or the plot of.

The movie is. What about you, Richard, Ah, can you hear me? Okay? Yeah, okay, sorry, you've heard of a pregnant pause. Richard is giving us.

A multiple Yeah. I was trying to adjust so that the sound is better on you guys, But it doesn't matter. I can hear what you're saying, so we'll just skip this anyway. Did you ask me a question? Yes?

I did? What did what? The same question to you, Richard about Cicario? Fantastic? Loved it.

I totally absorbing involving, you know, the Southwest in terms of like the Texas Arizona border going into Mexico. Not exactly my favorite aesthetic, not like where I want to spend a lot of time in a movie or in real life. Wow, Richard, but you can't deny that, you know, this kind of movie has an intrinsic I was going to use the word charm, but that's the wrong word. It draws you in because it's the kind of movie whose story is we're gonna bring you into a world that you're vaguely familiar with but you don't really know, and we're gonna show you the inside of that world. And that is typically a very powerful way to draw an audience into a story.

And in this story, Emily Blunt's character is our is our way in we are her as she gets somewhat hijacked into this new assignment. We go with her sort of under undercover. It's not even undercover, it's sort of embedded in this the secret operations of drug control on the border. You know, it's not it's not DEA, it's not even d O J. I don't know what it is.

It's it turns out to be CIA. And it's like, okay, you know early on this is going to be a movie that's that's that sort of sells itself on the notion we're going to show you how things really work. Can you handle the truth? And so we're asking that of ourselves and and of course Emily Blunt's character is asking that of herself, and it's fun as an audience member to sort of sort of compare yourself to her and kind of go, okay, well, now what would I do in this situation? Am I as naive as she is?

Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? And so as an audience, we are placed in exactly the right position. I believe we are given all the information we need. I don't think the narrative bucks I'm sorry, messes with us that much or at all in terms of what's really going on.

There's a couple of layers that get peeled back, but I believe they're peeled back at just the right moments, so that this is a movie where we are always leaning forward feeling overwhelmingly involved in what's happening. It's never so confusing that we have to lean back and go, Okay, I don't know what's happening or who the people are anymore, so I'm just I'm kind of disengaged until I've been given enough information that I can fully participate in the narrative. Again, I think we're in it, and I think that's good. No false mystery, just mystery mystery, and up until the final moment where we're wondering for ourselves and for her, is she a wolf or is she not a wolf? I agree, obviously.

I think with both of you, Doctor Pearlmutter. I think is going to have an interesting question about who the main character of the movie is, and I want to get into that at some point. But I think in terms of it being an interesting movie of a time and a place, and you know this, this movie came out in twenty fifteen, so we're eleven years down the road from this movie. Is the climate in what is Mexico the way it was then? Now?

Best I can tell, maybe not so much anymore. It's it's a little bit different than it used to be. So it's interesting because this is also kind of like a little bit of a time capsule of a movie. You know, it's of a kind of a time and a place where where this was the big push. I remember this.

I'm sure we all do, like the the mid teens of like the cartels, you know, and they're big deal and we got to deal with them. I mean at one point there was even like can we deem them a terrorist group? Like to handle them? And so you know, and you know, I enjoy the aspect of the movie that is clearly the like telling of a time and a place. The actors in the film are fantastic.

I mean, you know, Josh Brolin, Benizio del Toro, I mean, good lord. I mean, Emily Blunt is great, but I think obviously Benizio del Toro and Josh Brolin obviously you know, don't want say kind to steal the show. They totally steal the show. And you know, I think, to your point, David about Taylor Sheridan, like this is Taylor Sheridan's kind of first big thing, and it's a hell of a thing. I mean, it's it's a hell of a movie.

It's a hell of a movie to write, it's a hell of a movie to give up to somebody else to direct, especially a director like Danievilneuve, who I mean, talk about someone who in the last ten years has really cut their teeth on a lot of things. And is, you know, Richard, like we've talked about on our James Bond Show, supposedly allegedly he's going to be the one directing the next James Bond movie, so you know, and I will tell you the cinematography in Sacario is fantastic, and I'm you know, I think Villeneuve has an eye for cinematography in a way that a lot of directors don't, and I'm excited to see where he would take a franchise like James Bond, because this film is so beautifully shot and it is so well put together technically that I feel like his eye for direction is just I like dnevil Neuve as a director because he knows exactly what he wants, how to get it, and how to go about doing it in a way that both maintains the sense of this is a film, but also, like you've alluded to, Richard feels like we're a little bit in the things that are going on, a little bit more than other directors are able to do.

Theneuve is really about setting you in those moments with the characters. I mean, you see it a lot in those Dun movies. Enemy is the same way, Prisoners is the same way. It's all about coming into something very big in a very small, humanistic personal way. And I mean Cacario, I think, really lives up to that, because for me, the movie is really about Benizio del Toro's character.

You know, ultimately, I feel like, and you know, I mean, obviously the titular Ciicario. He is the titular Ciicario, So there is that as well. But I just find it interesting as a movie because it's so of a time and of a place. And then there's a sequel, which is nowhere near as good, but there is a sequel, So I mean, this is this is one of those movies where when I every time I watch it, I'm like, yeah, I really enjoy this movie, and then I promptly forget about it. Not be for any specific reason, it's just there's a lot of other things to watch.

It's a good movie. That's for sure, and it's definitely better than most of these kinds of movies tend to be. But there aren't a lot of these kinds of movies either. I mean, like you said, Richard, like West Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, that whole border area. Those kinds of movies all take a very similar hue to them if they're not you know, period pieces.

So this movie is no different. This is probably the best, most well done visually of those movies, but not surprising given the direction and you know who's involved, kind of at the highest level of it. Just to pick up on something both of you brought up. So you're watching a movie and it's set in Wisconsin or Switzerland. You have a palette of colors, you have a wild variety of environments.

I was born in Switzerland, and you can you can shoot a movie. They actually have parts of Switzerland which the way the weather patterns work, you can grow palm trees, believe it or not. So like you can shoot any scene in Switzerland. Maybe you have to like bring in some props for a desert scene, but like in Europe, you can shoot a lot of different things in the Southwest. Yeah, if you just flew in for an hour into West Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, the borderlands, northern Mexico, you would see some more limitations.

I mean there were maces, I mean a lot of the classic westerns. Right, there's cliffs, but there's you know, you watch an episode of Breaking Bad, you watch Hell or High Water, you watch this movie. You think there's limitations. But I think that sets up the difference between looking and seeing. And I'm gonna mention.

I'm gonna find a way to mention a Kiara Currosawa one of Akira Currosawa's great movies Dursuit Zala, where it was a movie about a Russian mapping military group in Siberia because Russia was still absorbing Siberia in nineteen ten. And this local woodsman, hunter from a local takes them around and he keeps lecturing them. He says, you look, but you don't see, because he's been living his whole life in the terrain, and so he can see the smallest things and say, like a deer passed by an hour ago. You know that somebody with a gun made a fire here or something like that. And I think that that's one of the themes here is that you can you can take a snapshot of the Southwest and you think you have seen something.

You think you know what's going on, but you don't necessarily know what's going on. It's it's hidden, and I think that keeps coming up. I mean that that's certainly what Josh Brolin, and to some extent the Alejandro character, Benito de Toro lectures the Emily Bunk character is about, like you're not seeing what's really going on, And of course we have to make a decision whether they're they're right, A, they're right, and b whether their their method of dealing what's going on is right. But that seems to be a persistent theme. It's like you think you see something, but you're not really seen.

Well, that is correct, and that is definitely the device of the movie is again peeling back layer after layer after layer until the point where we're literally going underground. What makes it powerful? I mean again, I kind of go back to the to the structure of it and are our way in. Everything is very clearly set out at the beginning. An incident occurs during an investigation, people are killed.

You know, we're there, We're in the middle of it. It's horrific, and we're very quickly brought into the reality of the cost and human lives of the drug trade across the border. And we know that Emily Blunt is dedicated to stopping this, and she's given the opportunity when when she's brought into this new operation. They don't tell her a lot, but they do say, do you want to get at the guy who is responsible for this? Right?

I love language, don't you do you want to get the guy who's really responsible for this? Who's really responsible? And they're not lying, I mean, it is true. And so she's like yes with her at that point limited scope and view of how these operations are carried out, and they're like, great, in that case, you're you're in the right group, So come with us. And as David said, they even, you know, Josh Brolin's character even says to her, look around, pay attention, be a sponge.

Learn. Okay, we're going to do things a little bit differently. And and and we're so in her point of view that we're asking all the same questions she's asking, and it's expressed through the screening play structure, but it's also expressed visually. Her point of view looking at people wondering about who is you know, Benisio del Toro, who is Josh Brolin? Who are these guys really?

What agency do they really work for? And then the answers, or at least some answers come to us when they should. Yeah, it's I do. I do enjoy this sort of movie and this sort of journey, and I'm excited to get into a discussion about who the main character actually is. So who is the main character of the movie, because in my approximation, it's Benisial del Toro, It's not Emily Blunt.

I mean Emily Blunt is. What Emily Blunt reminds me of is the male character in hell Boy. There's a kind of character that's brought in from out of kind of outside of the organization, and he shows up and he's like looking around, you know, wide eyed in the spectacle that you know, oh there's hell Boy, and there's a Sapien and there's you know, there's forget character, Solma Blair's character like look at all this crazy stuff, and it's like, that's kind of what this reminds me of because if it had just been I think if it had just been Benisio del Toro's character. It probably would have been hard to justify the vague, ambiguous nature of their allegiances without it seeming like these are just bad guys, which I mean, to be fair, I'm not sure that's not the wrong answer.

I'm just saying. I think I applaud Taylor Sharedan for taking it upon himself to tell a more conventional version of the story while still staying interesting, because this is a little bit of a conventional way of doing this. But I think it's executed rather well. Yeah, and I think this is a screenwriting class by two experts, and I'm just a member of the audience with my popcorn. But I think did Emily Blunt need to be there In a badly written version of this, an amateur version, right, you would have had just the top guys and they've got their special ops mission and they're going after the bad guys.

Hey, we heard from local Arizona police there's something going on. Okay, here's our mission. And you think about the mission impossible type of scenario like the old TV show and some of the movies where okay, we've got the explosives expert and we've got the radio expert and wiring and let's go get the bad guys and they do. That would have been a very easy screenplay. Emily Blunt didn't need to be in that screenplay because in those screenplays they rarely have like tagging along on the special ops team, an amateur who's not necessarily already gone through thirty ten years of training to be there.

Right that now they have a narrative device, like in order for us to do something on American soil, we need this, But she really did in a bad version of the screenplay. She didn't need to be there. And I'll let you both more qualified commonis, but it works so well to see through her eyes. She is not a naive, like she is an actual police officer who's dealt with death too's dealt with the drug trade. But she is represented as somebody who is like four or five times in this film she's surprised and astonished, like, well, actually she's very surprised and astonished when somebody that she brings home tries to kill her.

She actually says, yeah, the guy I brought home from the bar just tried to kill me. How do we write that up as a police report? You know? I mean, I mean, this is very brave to portray her as making these potentially fatal mistakes, and I'd like to hear from you guys about how well. I mean, maybe there are some decisions there that you don't agree with, but I thought it was brilliant to have her and not heard her be the dumb sidekick saying, well, gosh, I don't understand what's going on?

Could you guys explain it to me? The doctor Watson, the Sherlock Holmes that, like most detectives have a sidekick who has to have everything explained for the audience, but she serves she's the best observer within a film that I've seen in a film in a long time, and I'd like to hear your thoughts on it. Okay, So I'll be the one to say, I'll be the guy. I'll be that guy to say Structurally, I feel very very secure in saying this is Millie bluntz movie and she is the main character. In the same way that I shock my television classes when I insist that the main character of The X Files structurally is Scully, not Molder.

That's because that's the person going on the journey, and she's the one going on the journey, so so structurally I would answer the question in that way. But the fun thing about this is it's not math, and questions like this force us to really look at what the movie is about and what I would call the story, not the plot. David pointed it out perfectly. For the plot, we don't need her, But for the story we do, because this isn't a movie just about a plot a mission to infiltrate a drug cartel and get the leader. What the movie is really about is do the ends justify the means to a certain extent, or what the fuck even are the ends?

What are we doing here? And it's almost a journey of cynicism that reveals a deeper cynicism, that reveals a deeper cynicism that reveals the ultimate cynical heart of what is going on in this battle. But for the story, we do need a character who is on the scale the most naive, and that is Emily Blunt, because that's also the audience. We have to presume the audience is coming in somewhat ignorant, suspecting there's probably more going on. There's corruption.

We've all seen these movies. We've all read the books and seen stories, but now we need to fill in all the blanks along the way. In the middle is Josh Brolin, on the naive side, of course, is Emily Blunt, and then on the full dark side is Benicio del Toro, who is following a very personal mission. And we get that impression early on. We're it's not exactly quite sure what it is, and there's moments where we're sort of like, oh, wait a second, is this a double cross?

And which would have disappointed me because that would have spoken to plot rather than character. And I don't need a spy movie where everything is just oh my god, it's a mole within a mole within a mole. This is really about how do we, as what we feel we are, which is moral human beings, approach big, big moral problems. And what's nice about it is as time capsulety and as current or modern or cutting edge as it feels now or ever felt. We're in the world of Dashl Hammet, We're in the world of Red Harvest.

We're in a world of Sometimes law enforcement is about pitting one bad guy against another bad guy. Sometimes it's about maintaining an order in which we don't capture all the cinals. We keep certain ones in place so we know what the hell is going on. These are very old, old stories and and it's always fun to see them represented to us in extremely modern garb like this one is. But it speaks to very old stuff, which is can you be ever completely moral?

Can you ever have your hands completely clean? These are great questions. At the end, is Benicio del Toro a moral man in his own mind? In the mind of the audience. That's, in a way the main question, which I think is why he can He feels like a main character because he's facing those questions as much as Emily Blunt is, but from another angle.

So we leave the theater thinking about both of them. But we get our answer, you know, we do get an answer. I mean literally, at the end of the movie. I'm just I'm watching those two characters in this standoff that they're having, and I'm just like, okay, okay, now is the moment we're going to find out is she a wolf? Is she not?

And when I say that, what I'm really saying is did this journey change her a lot or completely? Your comment about dash Ol Hammond, I'm sorry, Chris, you were going. To say something. Now, go for it, Go go go. I'm a great appreciator of Raymond Chandler and the original stories and books of Philip Description, Philip Marlow, His Detective, The Big Sleep and so on.

And I remember the famous quote of Ross MacDonald, another novelist Rippe said about Raymond Chandler, He wrote, like a slumming angel. And I actually thought of that when I was watching this film. This is one of those films like, man, you need to take a shower after watching this film, like like this we're taking talk about a walk on the dark side, like you're seeing things and your are we moral agents? Because I was thinking my morale is being tested here. I mean, we're gonna skip ahead, and I hope we spend a few a little bit of time talking about the dinner scene, because I spend my social media time usually on Reddit, and I swear once a day somebody posts there is the dinner scene in Sacario the most brutal moment in the history of film, or something like that, because people who you know, those reaction things on YouTube where people watch you know, Star Wars for the first time and oh, oh, you mean Darth Vader is Luke's father or something like that, and people react or the Red wedding, Well, people watch the dinner scene.

And I watched the dinner scene and I was sitting there going, no, they're not going to allow this to happen in the Hollywood film. There's gonna be like, there's gonna be something like he takes the cartel leader outside and shoots him and leaves the family. I want to talk in detail about that scene, but I think it's emblematic of the Slumming Angel. It's like we are taken to the to the heart of darkness whatever metaphor is you want to use here, and we are along for the ride and we have to decide, like, wait a minute, do I approve of this? I'm approving of it right now.

Things that if you asked me in my daily life, I would say no, no, no, don't do that. And I just think that is such a wonderful experience to watch a movie where we're subjected to that. I agree with you completely, David. I mean, and you know Richard as well, Like I think it's interesting to have this movie kind of challenge you and your belief system on the way criminality is handled by this country. I mean, obviously, you know, the border is still an issue in a lot of ways, but not in the way that it was in this movie.

Like in this movie there they're obviously playing this up a little bit, and they're making this to be this kind of not thathing take us out a big thing, but it's just it's a bigger thing in the way that the narrative is kind of expressing it. And what I always find so interesting about this movie every time I watch it is a the dinner scene in the way it's to kind of juxtapose the rest of the violence in the movie, but also just this idea of like you both have said, like we are unsure where the narrative is taking us more or less the entire time. I mean, it is just it's going We are along for the ride. It is not clear what is happening. The other characters know what is going on, if they know it all, some of them know and some of them don't.

And we are just passengers on a train here, and we have no control. And I'm not saying in a movie any one of us has any amount of control, but to have that to have that control never given to you as an audience member is interesting because that's not a common thing that is done when it comes to modern film writing. I mean modern film writing. They're they don't want to challenge you in a lot of ways, because if you challenge an audience, the audience may kind of recoil and fear and not want to be you know, they just want they just want to get be given something. They don't want to have to try and achieve something.

And not saying that broadly, I'm just saying I think that's the kind of a weird expectation that's being written down to now. And this movie doesn't do that. I mean, this movie leaves so much ambiguity out on the table out kind of and the open, and like you have both said it, it really challenges you as an audience member to ask yourself where are you with everything? As much as Emily Blunt, because you may not even agree with the decision she makes. By the end, you may come away with it going well, I understood how she could get there, but I'm still not there.

And I think a good, well written movie challenges the audience in some capacity. So we have a character of a police officer in Mexico, and we sort of visit him. We sort of step out of the narrative and visit him throughout the film, and we see bits of his life, his child, who you know, plays soccer on the weekends, you know, the mom we're given sort of you know, the normal American family, except it's in Mexico. And then it's only towards the end of the movie that we catch up in this person enters the main narrative, and the movie actually ends with sort of a brief coda about how all of this giant drama has affected this small family that was more or less outside the main action but is now collateral damage to it, and directly because of Benicio del Toro's actions and in a way what he does.

I'm going to talk openly because I'm going to have to assume it's been ten years and so people have seen the movie. When he kills that police officer, that actually surprised me more than what he does at the dinner table scene, really, because I wasn't clear. I was sort of like, Okay, so now does he consider this guy sort of like you're almost you know, you're a part of this and I need you to get me to the next part. Of my plan, but I'm not going to make you necessarily pay for it because I don't need that to happen. Even though this guy is implicit and I was sort of like, I don't know, weirdly, because we've been given so much information about this guy his family, the movie is telling me to be on his side a little bit and to have a human concern for him.

So when he is killed very quickly, almost offhandedly, I have an emotional reaction like, oh shit that that is much stronger than what I have at the dinner scene, when the head of that particular cartel and his family are killed, which you know, again narratively, I'm just looking at like, well, okay, this is of course what he's going to do. I'm not surprised. It makes perfect sense. Well, yeah, according to what we've been given in who this guy is, there's no question in my mind all these people are going to die. It's just a question of, you know, how much is he going to you know, inflict pain before the kill shot, and it's it's fairly quick and clean.

What we are left with is that sense of collateral damage, that sense of outside of this main drama where we've seen lots and lots and lots of people whose everyday business is being on one side or the other of this drug pipeline. And then we just sort of see what you might think of as innocent victims. You know, cops dirty okay, you know, but he's got a family, kids, not dirty, wife's not dirty. But they're victims too, And it kind of it's kind of cool that it sort of comes back, sort of steps back out of the main narrative at the very end to go, how is all of this, this whole war affecting just the man on the street. Now, right now, we know how it affected Emily Blunt's character, but how is it affecting the man on the street?

Which I thought, you know, ultimately was yet another way of approaching the question. And that's what's great about a movie that really is just about big questions. In this case, what's the difference between morality, justice, and legal procedure? And those all become three very separate things in the movie, pursued by different characters. And what I love about each of those pursuits is there both at times clearly defined in the narrative, but also rather muddy in terms of even where they are drawing their own lines of delineation of where the movie feels like it can come in at these things because each of the characters in the movie, at least the three main ones z Emily Blunt, Benisio del Toro, and Josh Brolin, who we barely even talked about.

Josh Brolin, who I think he's great in this movie, but he's given of the three main characters, he's given the least to two do of the three main characters because of the way the narrative uses his character to be it's gonna use the parladce that the movie uses. He's the spook. He's the Cia Spook in the movie. And because he's the Cia Spook, it's a very understated role. But at the same time I love that he's just kind of, you know, three steps ahead.

But also he doesn't have his blindfold on the way she does intentionally, like he's the puppet master here, just kind of you know, because he knows what Benisio del Tour is gonna do. Del Toro is is confronted with anything outside of the ordinary, he's just gonna kill him. Like ben Azel, del Toro is single minded in his goal, and it is so single minded that legal proceeding and morality no longer matter. It is the metering out of justice that is all that is important, and it is the it is. And like you said, Richard, the age old story of an eye for an eye, those people did not have to die, but they died because the collateral damage is part of the the collateral damage is part of the punishment.

Because I think it's Jeffrey Donovan, who is again barely in this movie. He's great and burn. Notice he go, I think, what does he say when he sees those people hanging from the highway. He's like, it's beautiful the way they do it. It's a beautiful thing.

And it's like every time up until this recent time I watched the movie, I've kind of recoiled at that scene. But this time I'm like, I kind of get it. I understand what he's getting at. What they're doing is like they're just you scare the entire population shitless constantly and keep them in a total state of fear. And in keeping them in a total state of fear, you are able to do whatever you want, whenever you want, with essentially impunity, which is I mean, which we see at the Border Crossing, which talk about a tense scene a but amazingly written, amazingly shot, so well acted, and I love the idea that it's not even made clear whether or not these guys are there to get that guy back.

Those are just guys there with guns. That's what Emily Blunt says. She's like, what, who are these people? Why are we even killing these people? And I don't know.

It's like, Okay, there's all of like one person it would seem that she has to kill, and it's the lone wolf cop on the bike. That's it. Everybody else seemingly didn't have to die. Well seem you know, it's you all. The unwritten line of Josh Brolin is to tell Emily Blunt, we're in the wild West now, and it's funny because we are literally we're in the Southwest.

This you know, you could compare this to a Western. Westerns are compelling and and are typically compelling because they are stories of justice systems being built from the ground up. That's why, you know, the good guys and the bad guys are all so compelling, because because we have not established the rules of the game yet in the West, that's what's happening here. It's different rules. Emily Blount's rules are we need to take these people to court and prosecute a case.

And Josh Brolin is saying that's not what we're doing here. We're playing a whole different game, and frankly in a weird way. I was just going to say, it takes her a long time to get on board if she ever does. Yeah, And in defense of her character, I'll go back a little. As you guys know, about thirty years ago, I wrote a book about police and the media, and included doing a visual ethnography of a police department where I rode along in the car in a squad car for a year and a half with all officers and took pictures and saw what happened, ask questions about what happened, and then also compared it to sort of the TV portrayal of police detective crime.

And one of the things that I learned right away was that police, even though you in the television show Law and Order, they do show a connection between the law part and the order part, police did have to think about things like getting the conviction in court right. So sometimes I'd see somebody and I'd go, oh my gosh, that person is incredibly guilty. Why didn't you arrest them? And the police would say, we don't have enough evidence yet, we don't have probable cause, we don't you know, the prosecutor would blow up if we arrested. Now, you know, they've got to make a case.

You know, the detectives need to do some things. And she lives in that world, right, she lives in the world of like procedure and like filling out a form. I remember one of the things that really struck me. In fact, in my book, I have a pick picture of the cubby holes where like the four hundred forms that you had to have. There's a lost bike, there's a form for a lost bike, there's a there's a drug deal.

You know. Yet there's a long, long series of forms for like discovery of drugs and you know, certifying the weight of the drugs and how much drug discovery of money. In the world of forms, and obviously anyone who lives in the world of forms fantasizes about what if we had no forms for a day, right, what if we just do what we wanted and solve the problem? Right, So, to some extent, Emily Blunt is taken to a drug enforcement officer fantasy camp where oh yeah, and her character, the moral rectitude of her character is that she she technically gives in at the end, but but she fights it all the way and I don't think she completely She doesn't give in morally, she didn't say like, Okay, now I see you know, hey Josh bro and hey Alexandro, you know what, I'm going to transfer and join you guys.

And and in Sacario part two, I'll be no, no, you never see her again. They're apparently going to make a Zacario part three. I'm not sure she's going to be. In that one. We'll find out.

But the point is that that separation, uh is one that we typically don't see, right and and and and absolutely of a majority of people who work in law enforcement don't can't practice that. I mean they literally be like, you know, they'd be fired if they did. The local news station would find out, Uh, you. Know, they're there, they're there. Chief wouldn't allow it.

I mean, there's there's so I think one of the beauties of the movie is it gives us this world of what could happen, what does happen at one point, Josh Boon actually says to her, this is what happens in Juarez when they get embedded, when they've dug in, right, this is what happens when they control, you know, they're the end the And I think the Mexican police officer the banality. Of his life. I mean, like, like, don't we have like two minutes of like him eating lunch and talking. Yeah, breakfast minute. This is a film about like assassination and machine gun fights and whatever.

We're taking two or three minutes to this kid wants to go to soccer and his dad is tired from a long night. And well, I think it's showing these the industry, like this is just this is part of the world. And he's accepted it. He's not He's not waking up in the morning going gosh, you know, I'm I'm part of this terrible industry and people are being killed. He doesn't think he's going to be affected by it because it's so normalized.

Well yeah, and you know, and then the guy that the Texas police officer who who is corrupt you. Have a John Bernthal's character. Yeah, it's weird to see him in something for like five minutes given to his like visibility. Now, that's very weird. I was like, right, he's in this movie for five minutes.

Well, it's funny. It's like one of the other things the movie is saying is that corruption is something you can only safely get away with at your if you're at the very top of the food chain. But corruption when you're down at the bottom of the food chain means you're gonna get beaten up, killed, or sent to prison. That's what happens to him, That's what happens to our Mexican police officer, who are basically equivalent characters in a way. They're just like, right, we're just kind of like, you know, bottom feeders that are facilitating all of this and maybe picking up a few scraps extra in a couple of bucks or something.

But we're not We're not benefiting in the way that others are, and they are the ones who pay the price. Well, isn't that always the way the system works, that people at the top are insulated from all the bad things happening and the ones at the bottom aren't. I mean, and you know what's funny about Taylor Sheridan Richard, I know you weren't with us for the Hell or high Water episode, but similar themes there. I mean, that's one of the themes in that movie is those at the top are insult against the bad decision making of themselves or other people, and that insulation, you know, allows them to throw other people under the bus or toss them to the wolves, or however you want to perceive it. And that happens all the time.

It happens everywhere in any capacity. The people at the top are often the ones exploiting those not in the same position, and Sacario, i mean leans into that. What's funny is, like you said, Richard, the corruption's allowed when it's DoD guys or when it's you know, Benizio del Toro, who is apparently a former Mediine cartel member or is a Mediane cartel assassin. It's ever made clear. They call him Mediine a bunch, and I'm assuming he is part of the cartel in an assassin capacity.

But Benicio del Toro is definitely the less of him the better in this movie. And the amount that they have of him in this movie works because I think it's the perfect amount. But there's that's one of these treading a fine line very carefully roles, because it could have been way too much if they had just had like two more scenes. Frank, It's one of those things where I think, like Taylor Sheridan hit the right amount of time that Benicio del tore is in the movie without giving too much of what he's doing away. I want to talk about how interesting it is we are having these conversations about small characters, which is another sign of a great movie, right, And I want to talk about my favorite small character because, as you both know, I have this idea.

The Academy has never gotten back to me, even though I've emailed them many times saying there needs to be an Academy Award for tiny performance, like just a few sentences or a look. I had to look really deeply to find out the cartel leader's wife. I believe. I actually have to say I believe instead of I know, because I had to look like a lot for this. Laura Martinez Cunningham apparently she's not credited.

That's weird, yeah, or what she doesn't say a word ran that's true, she doesn't know. She doesn't know screen actors, guilders like that. But like, let's just play this scene a little bit here. Okay. So Alejandro makes his way after some fancy shooting into the ridiculous palatial mansion of the you know, obviously ostentatiously over decorated mansion of the cartel leader.

He's already killed a bunch of guys, including the police officer, including the Northern Connection boss, North of the Border boss, and first person he encounters after killing all the made guys. We would say when in the mafia, term is a maid holding a salad bowl, as I recall her, like a bowl of food. And so this is where I'm thinking, like, okay, well, you know, and this is a term I think is used in the Cigar Day of the Saldado film, like he's going to have to clean up, so that maid. Is going to die. But he did, but we don't see that.

We don't know the one. Hundred percent that he doesn't kill her on the way out, but he just looks at her, makes it judgment you're no threat, you're not important, and walks past. So like we've gotten this little little sign here. Okay, well you know he's got maybe he's not gonna just shoot everybody in the room, okay. And then he walks in and I'll let you guys describe the dialogue and everything, but I want to talk about this.

I hope her name is correct. I'm sorry, Laura if I'm miscasting you here, But Laura Martinez Cunningham, the wife of the cartel leader. Now flash backwards to Ka Corleone, Michael, did you have anything to do with this? You know? And the door closing right at the end of The Godfather, right now, Alejandro says, here you are having sitting dinner.

I'm not saying exact quote. And every night you have people kill, you have families killed. And you see the wife again Academy Award for Tiny Performance. She's terrified by the prospect of like her children, but the man with a gun is sitting there right in front of her kids. You could just, man, you have fuel some empathy no matter what she's involved in or not, like wow, to be in that situation a mother, right, any parent.

But then she looks at the cartel boss for a second. It's an amazing look, and you're wondering, like, does she not know? Because in twenty sixteen, can you have to think that there are no k Corleone, There are no ones who are innocent of what goes on in crime crime families. I don't know what the story is there, but like she pulls it off. And again this is this question about people coming living in the same place, living in the house, living in Guarez, living in El Paso, whatever, living in Albuquerque, and they see but they don't necessarily know.

And I think that's a very interesting play that they have yet once again with yet another character. They're a very tiny character. Those characters are really hard to cast because at a certain point in the process you realize, oh, this is very important, Like these these two kids and this woman are going to be in one of the biggest scenes of the movie, if not sort of the biggest scene. They don't have lines. How how do you go about casting those roles?

Who what do you ask an actor to do at the audition for that role? The kids? What do you do? Or do you simply look at what they've done in the past, meet with them, have a conversation and go, well, I hope it reads you know. You know, that's when a casting director really helps you, because I always even I wonder it's like what does a casting director really do?

But a casting director can can really be like no, no, I know this person, I know their work. They're going to deliver. When they're on set, you'll be happy. And you know, if you're a smart director and you've chosen the correct casting director, you listen to that. I give a lot of credit, Richard.

You did not join us for the Sopranos podcast that Mike White and I have the projection booth and I are doing. But Georgiana Walkin, Chris Walkin's wife, is one of the cast casting directors on that show. And her casting on that show is one of the main reasons that show works so well, is because everybody in that show is well cast. And I think, to your point, like a good casting director can straight up break your mo you know right, I mean, look at look at you know. I know you're you're friends with Alan Richson.

Look at the role he took over from someone who did not embody that role, correct. I mean, the role of Reacher is not one that should be played by a diminutive human being. That is not the plump Yeah, but when are the biggest movie star in the world, Yes, sure, No. The biggest movie star in the world who has to stand on a box next. It's fine, He's not punching his neighbor off of its motorcycle or whatever the fuck he was doing over there, and and wacky in Wacky Tennessee.

It's in this film. If you don't have the right casting at every moment, there is going to be light that shines through the facade. Because that's the other thing about this movie. And I think to your point, David, it's so well crafted and so expertly kind of honed in every direction that every role does have to matter, even the kind of I would say, you know, the Mexican cop who has given like five lines in this entire movie, even he is sympathetic in a way that needs to be somewhat internalized by the audience, because, like you said, Richard, his deaths is as impactful as anyone else is, anyone else's is in the movie. And he is literally a nameless, faceless cop.

That's it. Yeah, Well, what's funny is that the final bad guy at that dinner table, you know, the cartel leader, they actually cast a guy who, when you look at him, you know they could have gotten you know, oh, Danny Trejo. Okay, a guy you look at Danny Treyjoe and you're like, we're in trouble. This guy's bad news. And of course the joke is Danny Trejo's one of the nicest guys in the world.

And if you ever just see him in an interview, it's like, oh, I want to go party with this guy. But they cast someone who actually has a very engaging face, who does not frighten you, who if you were sitting in a room with him, you'd feel totally at ease. And and I thought that was brilliant, you know. It's like, Okay, well, we know we've been told what this guy is. We're not questioning it, but our instincts when we look at him, we are slightly disarmed.

That's the old like the devil comes to you in a suit, right, not you know, with the horns and a tail. I mean, that's the Yeah, looks like a nice guy. He's probably you know, you know, jokes around with his kids, you know. Yeah. Alec Baldwin says, good, you want to be good with your kids, Go home and play with your kids.

You're a good dad. Okay, yeah, doesn't matter if you're murdering people. I guess it's just you know, I mean, again, the morality of the movie is kind of the same thing that you know, the Sopranos tackles in the third season, where it's like, at what point do the people involved know what they're doing and how it's affecting other people? And at what point, while they may not be doing it quote intentionally or not, at what point are they not essentially complicit in their actions or the actions of others that are being committed on their behalf. And it's you know, it's you could ask the question of the cartel members or of the American government hiring Colombian assassins, like that's you know, that's the other thing that kind of just a lantern gets hung on.

Benisio del Torre's character is a assassin for the Colombian cartel, hired by the American government and assumingly paid American taxpayer dollars too, which is which again, like it's like we've asked before, like ends justifying the means. I don't know if the ends justify the means in any of this, but I love watching a movie where they ask that question and kind of give multiple avenues to go down, because at times I would say, the movie's wanting you to get to the point where the ends justify the means, and at other times the movie is challenging you to push back on it and say, no, the ends do not justify the means. Well, a question that you can ask, and for fun, I'll ask you guys, is Emily Blunt at the you know, toward the end of the movie penultimate scene, has an opportunity to kill Benizio del Toro, and she makes a decision not to.

Is killing him or not you know, which is the more moral act at that point, killing him or not killing him? Well, she makes a She makes a number of mistakes in this movie. One of them is and I think it's a rule you don't pull a gun and point it at anybody right less, unless you plan on killing him, unless unless one of your options that you might exercise, right I mean, especially in that kind of a scene. And I think, I don't know if you interviewed Alejandro the character and asked him about Emily Blunt, I thought, again, this is just the the amazing acting. And again we could spend two hours on the sound design.

I want to bring the sound design. It's no kidding, yeah, like. Thinking of actually what I the most recent content that that I beautiful content that I compared to was was Chernobyl where they have no music. It was just sort of sireny, you know, twists and but this a lot of a lot of the sounds in this movie are wails, their cries of pain as music, you know, mixture there. Well.

Okay, so if I were interviewing Alejandro, Alejandro, tell me the truth, you know, what did you think of this police officer from from America. I think he actually respects her. I think he actually says like, Okay, I get where she's coming from. She hasn't experienced what I've experienced. She hasn't seen what I've seen.

She's standing up for her principles. But business is business. I've we've got to achieve our ends by any means necessary. So it's not I've seen some interview, some fan theories on the web of how like Emily Blunt is continually humiliated and the whole point of the film is to make fun of her. I think that's weighed four or five bridges too far in terms of character.

They're they're all very dismissive. That's a very dismissive way of looking at the movie. Yeah, I think they're all professionals but in different world, right, And I think that's just something that really comes across there, and we don't know what's going to happen afterwards. Obviously, obviously we do know because there was a Sacario Day of the Soldado on a parent and Josh. She's not in it.

She's not in it, but she's not in it. She's not in it at all, which is low key hilarious in it of itself. I mean it's implied that she didn't, you know, immediately fly to Washington and talked to you know, the Washington Post or something like that. I mean, her story has ended. Maybe we'll see Zacario three.

But the point being that I like the respect there and in the dinner scene that let's go back to the cartel boss his kids. You know, I'm start trying to think, you're you're how old were they seven and ten or something like that. Guess that's that's a tough scene, right, Like you're casting a child and like a manic is coming in there, and like we don't want you to be you grew up in a family where you're not going to show terror. You're not going to start crying and begging for your life. Nobody noticed.

Nobody's begging the way. Even the wife doesn't say, oh, please don't kill my children. It's just not possible within the culture of somebody living. And that's a situation. The kids don't.

The kids are afraid, obviously, but they don't. You know, they're not quaking in terror. That's great. The directing of young actors, you know, that's great young acting. The cartel boss.

I love his physicality. I love how he changes stance a couple, just shifting his like at first he's like, women, please don't do this, and then oh, you know what, buddy, let me tell you something you know about the business, or something like that, and he becomes three or four. He switches roles three or four times, and you can see how effective a businessman he is. That when he has to be hard, he said to be hard, when he's probably negotiating with equals, he's negotiating with you. Probably Sometimes he's an encouraging boss.

Hey, I really approve of what you did on Thursday. We're so glad to have you with the company. You know, he could probably pull that off too. And again, it's this world of different professionalisms, and I just appreciate how much Villeneuve and Shared and the casting director and whoever all the other people involved were able to pull that off. You know, I think the complaints about Emily Blunt's character are based on an expectation that she will be a traditional hero, she will reveal herself as the hero of the story, which I find I mean, I can understand that, I guess, But for me, so early on the movie was telling me this is not going to be a movie where traditional notions of heroism or you know, the triumph of law enforcement is going to be held up and celebrated.

Early on, I felt like that wasn't going to be the story. I thought the story was going to be the slow cymicalization of Emily Blunt. And so for that to happen, I mean, all those humiliating moments are there to reveal over and over and over again to her, the world is not what you think it is. You still think it's this when it's that. So you're gonna keep tripping, you're gonna keep hitting, you know, keep running into that glass patio door until you get it, and she never gets it, you know, which, which at the end we're left to wonder, is that a good thing or a bad thing.

It reminds me a lot of Chinatown at the end, where it's just like that's just the way it is, Like that's that is, It's just it just is. And they don't say I mean, they don't have to say it's no godless Emily blund you know, they don't have to say that, it's what is you know, it's what is Kate Maser, Like, they don't have to say that. But by her not shooting Benicio del Toro, by him putting her on the spot, by him coming back to her apartment and you know, don't stand on the don't stand you shouldn't be standing on any balconies for a while, like, you know, by him saying that, like that is that moment of like you need to understand that things have changed and you are still operating as if things are the same, and you refuse to accept that you are now a different cog in a different machine than you ever were before.

Yeah, and it's interesting that they send him, and I'm glad they did because the story needs those two characters to come to a conclusion. But when you step back, you have to wonder how useful Beneathio del Toro is to this operation anymore. He has achieved his ends. He no longer really has a stake in assisting the United States of America in their anti drug efforts. How far away from a bullet in the head is he?

If they had one more scene where he's having a beer with Josh Brolin and Josh Brolin blows his head off, you go, all right? Of course? Right makes perfect sen. He's yeah, he's we've we've shopped out load. He's done now.

He is no longer useful to us. He was only useful when he had an agenda. That agenda has been served, moving on, now he gets only the aliability Secario two. Day of the sold OUTO. Have you seen that movie?

No? Okay, well, obviously they stole some notes from you. That's a nice way of putting it. Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to give away the plot, but Alejandro is back and uh, this issue comes up. That's interesting.

So what I watch? Well, I mean, I I've watched both of these films about five times. But you but I do recommend Day of This sold OUTO. I actually think maybe, well, I'd love to have a show on it. But the point being that he does prove to be useful for other things.

Oh yeah. But but to both of your points, it is interesting because you would think in another movie they would have that scene, that would be the addendum scene. As you know, he's going out to his car and turns it on and the car explodes. Like you said, David, gotta clean up all the loose ends, gotta you know, gotta make sure everything is done, and there's nobody left to talk about it. And I love that scene at the end because it's an echo of a scene you know, twenty minutes earlier in the movie where she points Emily Blunt comes upon Benezio del Toro taking the cop hostage, and she points a gun at it, and she's like, you gotta stop from taking you under rest, and Benicio del Toro just goes bag bang, shoots her in the chest, in her body, in her vest, and goes, don't ever point a gun at me again.

And it's like, Okay, we're gonna we're gonna get the payoff here at the end of the movie of that and in that moment, we now have seen the transformative nature of the narrative on her character. And it's funny because it's not really that far from the end of the movie where that happens, but it's just enough time, there's just enough of an achievement of the goal at that point that we understand, okay, well, she realizes that the ends did justify the means in some capacity. And I like that we never see that realization on screen ahead of time. It's in that moment that we see it, which again is a director, a writer, and the cinematographer trusting the audience to understand what they're conveying through the magic of the filmic language, which is not just audio but visual and dialogue.

And I again, the end scene of this movie I think is as impactful as any other scene because again it shows the nature to which we are willing to turn a blind eye to getting things done, even if the ends do not justify the means. Because by the end of the movie, she is a changed character. Her idealism has been washed away in some respects by the reality of the nihilistic nature of pitting two warring cartels against one another is pretty nihilistic. It's a race to the bottom. But once you figure out which rat is the most dangerous rat of all, then you drown that rat in the bucket too, and there you go, everybody.

And that's the US apparently. I mean that's the take here, right, I mean, that's the take on the US government is the US government is drowning all the rats in a bucket until there's one big rat left, and then we try to drown that. It's all about survival of the fittest, and the cynicism behind it, I think comes back to the Taylor Sheridan of it all, because Hell or High Water is a movie that I think is immensely cynical, but also by the end of it, it's very hopeful. This movie is reversed, very hopeful at the beginning, immensely cynical at the end, Like there's nothing uplifting about the end of this movie. You have children playing soccer with gunshots going off in the background.

Like that is not an optimistic movie. That is a and you know that's the end. It's just Chinatown Jakeo of it all because life continues with or without, you know, regardless of what's happening, Life continues, and the cartels are still there. Yeah, and typically and again, I imagine being a student in Richard's screenwriting course here. Typically a criticism of a film would be, you know it had six endings.

You got to have one ending, right. That would be a pretty good appreciation of a student saying like, you know, you keep having another ending. But this film had points where a normal film, a lesser film, could have just ended like okay, Alejandro kills the cartel boss and his family credits. I could have been an ending, right. It could have been that there were three or four points and then the coda of like okay, Emily Blunt, you got to sign this document.

You know, either either your your brains or your signature are going to be I mean, I have to think that's a direct reference to the Godfather there. You know, either your brains or your signature is going to be on this paper. But then there's another ending. But they all work. And again, typically in a film, it's a negative criticism to say, yeah, that film had four endings.

You know, they should have made up their mind which one. I think all of those endings needed to be there. Again, you're the screenwriting teacher, Richard, you tell me, and you're the producer, Chris, you tell me. I agree, excuse me, I agree. The ending on the family of the corrupt Mexican cop was somewhat required by the math of the screenplay.

Right, it was negative one right at the end. It needed that little yeah, the remainder one. You had to readdress it because it was the one line of narrative that stood outside kind of the main thrust of everything else in the story. It was sort of this alternate, parallel story that did need to be concluded, as it were, even though it's not really concluded, but it is. It is capped off, it is referenced, and again, what's interesting is then you can have the argument in class, you can have the discussion, you can have the assignment, which is what was the meaning of that storyline?

What happens if we removed that storyline. Could that storyline have been removed from the movie? I think it could have. It's like removing a particular instrument from a band or an orchestra. But what does it add?

The question becomes what does it add? You could jangle those scenes out, you know, if the studio put a gun to your head and said you don't have to cut ten minutes. Yeah, you could cut that and you would still get the overwhelming gist of the movie. Both plot wise and story wise, But to add that little bit of harmony in allows for an even greater picture, because this is a movie that wanted to approach this issue from as many different points of view as possible and show it from a variety of angles. And that's what that storyline allows for.

And that's why that ending doesn't bug us. Do we need Josh Brolin? Probably not? You know, do we need to see what he's up to? We know what he's up to.

We thought he was going to be the height of cynicism at the beginning of the movie. Turns out he's not. Turns out he's just kind of a cog in a machine. So so we don't really do you know, Do we need to go back to Daniel, you know, her partner. No, we get it.

We sort of know. You know, we heard the part he's saying in this choir. We're good. So yeah, it's it's fun. This is a great movie to discuss and talk about because, I again, it's got that perfect mixture of feeling extremely modern and yet all of its themes are go back to the Greeks.

Taylor Sheridan man, he's he's he's painting with a rather broad brush. But the colors that he's using I feel are rather are not distinctive, but they have not been painted in a while. And Richard, you know this as well as David, like, the Western has fallen out of favor sort of. But to David's point, Yellowstone, Landsman, all these things, those are just Westerns or as I think, David you put it last time, what Taylor Sheridan has kind of hwed the Western towards for a while. And there's nothing wrong with that.

I mean, it's if this is the way that the Western can survive as a genre, I'm all for it because just to have dudes and cowboy hats running around on horses, there is a moment where that's going to hit a kind of zenith point for people and the fact that we can kind of get whatever this is on the other side of it, this kind of you call it a neo Western, or you know, a noir Western, or whatever you want to call it. Like you said, Richard, this is ultimately just a Western. Well, for my money, the last Western was unforgiven. That was it. Yeah, Yeah, we talked last time about these points where a Western comes along for generationally.

The Wild Bunch I remember seeing it and being told this was the Western that ended the Western in the sense that, like the last scene is the precursor of World War One, the machine gun, the industry has destroyed, the man against the man, you know, the high noon, the personal duels, going back to the Odyssey and the Iliad, where battles are settled by personal duels between heroes. Right, of course, that just up through the Westerns of john Ford, all of it. But then along comes in Sam Peckinpau's The Wild Bunch, a machine gun that'll take out five hundred people, which it's set just a couple of years before World War One, where we discovered that, you know, on a level battlefield against heavy weaponry, your heroism really doesn't mean much anymore.

And I think that that is something that this film is asking here, is not just a question of like, is anybody a hero here, because going back to the ancient Greeks, of course, heroes were people who are literally like Achilles, half man, half god, like their lineage, their parentage was half a man, half a god. And you weren't. You weren't. If you were an ordinary mortal, you couldn't be a hero like they genetically, they wouldn't allow you to be a hero. We've imposed the idea of someone being a hero who doesn't have that heritage.

Tom Cruise obviously is a hero and every film there's in in this film, people do things, which again I just I sat there, the dinner scene, a whole bunch of scenes, and it went in the direction I didn't expect. Which is the greatest respect I have for a movie is when it goes or television show or digital game, when it goes in a direction I don't expect, but I go, oh boy, that's better than anything I came up with. Nice, yeah, yeah, I'm no, I'm with you. This like like I think we've all said, like this could have been and in the hands of a much lesser director and screenwriter and cinematographer, this would have been a very straightforward by the books under we know where this is going, we know where this is headed kind of movie, and it is so far from that.

And I think, to Taylor Sheridan's credit and to Tod nevil Noves credit, this is a movie that I think you know clearly there's been one sequel. There may be another sequel. It's I think one of Dnievil noves better movies, even though he's made a whole lot of really great movies as well. So there's a lot of really great things that go into this movie, not to just mention the acting and everything else. So, I mean, you know, Taylor Sheridan, it's not a surprise that he's been a sick, accessful as he has.

But I wouldn't have thought, like, let's translate this into a TV show. Let's translate this tone into a TV show. But man works like Gangbusters, So good for you, good for him. He has changed, hasn't it. I mean, yeah, I'm old enough to remember where you know, you you'd watch a CBS drama and you knew that they weren't gonna kill a child on screen, scream right or implied on screen unless it was just the worst villain the world.

We live in the streaming world, right we we you can do a lot. But but this does have so many elements that yeah, and in fact, we're gonna see now because it's interesting that Taylor Sheridan has signed a deal with CBS. Right, He's he's going to be producing. He Marshals is right, stip good again, good for him? Like this if this is what people are resonating with, awesome, like a far be it for me to to argue like this, this genre of filmmaking and television like has it's not really been a thing for a while.

So you know, I'm I'm not gonna not gonna pooh poo it. So anything else we want to say about Sikario before we close this episode out? No, Richard, no David. No, Okay, Well, until the next time I and or Richard and or David come and talk about movies. You can find me over the culture Cast.

But more importantly, Richard, where could people find you and the things that you work on? People can find me on the award winning Richard Adam's Paranormal Bookshelf podcast. Check it out on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I don't think the last time you were on here you said award winning. What award is that, Richard?

This signal award? Hell? I got a bronze third place? Motherfucker? Oh wait, I'm sorry once again, I'm sorry.

I have a bleef. I'm gonna have a bleep button on this A bleep beep bleap me be fair. I only there were only two times I said the word fuck. Oh by a second, that's make it three. Oh lord, man, you're gonna have to gonna have the button here on this one.

Speaking of buttons, yeah, go ahead and hit the subscribe or like button or wherever you get your podcast iTunes or Spotify. More than likely like rate and review this show there. Patreon dot com slash culture cast is where you can go to kick a couple dollars my way. You get to hear Richard and I and Mike White talk about James Bond that is coming to an end very quickly. We do not know what we are doing next, but it will probably be just as entertaining as the Bond podcast.

Doctor Perlmutter, thank you so much for picking the film and requesting Richard's appearance at the party. Oh thanks man. He shows up when asked, only nicely, and as always, we'll We'll catch you on the next episode The Bings for the Boks from The Boss The Books f