Narcos: Mexico - all of the drug bingeing onscreen motivated me to binge all 10 eps over the weekend. Really not bad at all, especially in the way it plays out the scenario of fake-busts-being-done-to-please-the-Yankees so many times - as that's pretty much a central metaphor for understanding what was all going on with the geo politics, and as an explanation of how we got here.
Brilliant clothes and decor choices. I'm not sure how convinced I was by Diego Luna as Miguel Angel ... he nailed some of the cold calculation, but still seemed just a bit wimpy to become Lord of the Skies. But maybe all that's leading up to the horror of the ending... and what lies in store, if they do more about the Mexican drug war in particular.
After a while I sort of wonder how much mileage there is in these, as if you don't want to do just straight narc-sploitation, there aren't that many dramatic arcs to play with (spoiler: "Almost Everybody Dies, After Making Some Bad Decisions" could apply to any of the series). Not sure the writing was really strong enough to really paint in the shades to each individual person's character, or to what made Sinaloa, in particular, such a breeding ground for these guys. But it's getting much much better over time at not just channeling US "explanations" of the drug war and not always making gringos the heros.
The actor playing Rafa is absolutely brilliant - Tenoch Huerta he's called - pure charisma - and I thought that even before I looked him up and realised it was the same guy who had played one of the most terrifying characters ever, in the earlier (and more miserable) feature film
Sin Nombre. It's excusable I didn't recognise him though - in
Narcos he definitely didn't look like this!
