After hearing half of the crew interviewed on the wonderful Team Deakins podcast I thought I'd revisit this one.
When I originally saw this film I had recently read a biography of Pablo Escobar which went into some detail on the history of the Medellín Cartel, only alluded to in the film, and I had imagined its vision of masculinity meant with some irony. (As the cartel head puts it: "Who do you think we learned it from?") Having subsequently seen almost everything else from writer Taylor Sheridan, it's hard to be so charitable: he's quite serious about his hard men making hard decisions.
One of the tidbits from the podcast was that, as originally scripted, the film began with Benicio del Toro's Alejandro, rather than Emily Blunt's FBI agent Kate Macer. It's so easy to see how this could have been such a different film without Villeneuve's decision to maintain focus on Kate -- just toxic machismo in a bottle.
Enthralling action-thriller about the cost of the war on drugs on the humanity of those involved -- not just the dead and injured, but those who become monsters to survive.