Original subtitles

(Man speaking Spanish on TV)

(Woman speaking Spanish on TV)

(Gunshots)

-(Swat 1) Get down! Get down! -(Swat 2) Don't move!

FBI! Don't move!

Get down! Get down!

(Swat 3) Where are the hostages? Where are the hostages?

(Swat 4) FBI! Police! Don't move!

(Swat 3) Down! Stay down!

(Swat 2) Cross your legs! Hands in the air!

(Swat 4) Police! Don't move! Police! Don't move! Get down!

-(Swat 4) Get down! -Clear!

Police! Search warrant. Don't move!

-Steppin' out! -(Swat 5) Police, don't move!

Police, don't move! Search warrant!

FBI!

-(Man) Are you hit? -I'm good.

Fuck!

(Swat 2) Front room, clear!

Team leader! Status?

(Team leader) We're clear, ma'am! Two suspects in custody!

(Indistinct chatter in distance)

-You OK, Macer? -Yeah.

(Macer) Why'd he shoot? There's no-one here.

Whoa.

What the fuck?

(All coughing)

(Retching)

(Coughing)

-(Macer) Jesus! -(Retching)

Those weren't our hostages.

No. That was something else.

-(Team leader) Macer? -Yeah?

US Attorney wants a statement. What do I say?

The truth.

(Indistinct talking)

(Camera shutter clicks)

Looks like Sonora.

Yeah.

How many, total?

We've got 15 in this hall here, about 20 in the back bedroom.

We haven't even checked the attic or under the crawl space.

Call DOJ, let 'em know what we have.

This one of the houses owned by Manuel Diaz?

No way to connect him, but he owns it.

Jesus Christ.

Reg, step out. It's OK.

(Gags)

(Exhales)

(Officer) Vickers! I need bolt cutters!

Vickers!

PD found something.

(Macer coughs)

(Dog yelps)

(Groans)

(Softly) Relax.

Relax.

(Male newsreader) Such a heavy body count this close to Phoenix

is without a doubt a major escalation for the cartels.

There will be pressure in Washington

to explain how such a dramatic outrage

could happen so deep inside the American heartland.

We may be talking about the victims of a turf war

or maybe some illegal immigrants

who are tied to a ransom.

It will be weeks before we have a clearer picture on who...

(Inaudible)

(Reg) What's goin' on?

I have no idea.

She's been leading our kidnap response team for three years.

Put her through the grinder since she got here, and she hasn't blinked.

She's in the front line.

Nobody's gonna be happier than Kate to see these guys go down.

So she's a thumper.

Today was her fifth OIS.

Five-and-oh, not bad for a rookie.

She never worked cases?

Been kicking doors since day one.

I like her already. What about the partner? He seen any action?

He's only been with us 18 months.

-What's his background? -He's a sharp kid.

ROTC scholarship to Maryland,

did a tour in Iraq, got his law degree from UNC.

-He's green, but he's good. -(Sighs)

No lawyers on this train. Just give me the girl.

We did this by the book, right?

Come on, of course.

-Jesus. -What?

-(Softly) Oh, shit. -Would you step in here, Kate?

Quite a find today, the loss of two officers notwithstanding.

Yes, sir.

How familiar are you with Manuel Diaz's operation?

His company, Sun Oasis, has 80 or so foreclosure properties.

He has other legitimate businesses. Um...

But he's rumoured to be linked with one of the Mexican cartels.

Manuel Diaz works for the Sonora Cartel.

Most likely their senior member in the United States.

What do you know about his brother?

I wasn't aware he had one.

Guillermo. His brother's name's Guillermo.

You know anything about his cousin?

-None of that is in his file. -His cousin is Fausto Alarcon.

-I don't know who that is. -No-one does. He's off the grid.

He's number three in the Sonora Cartel.

-This is not my department, sir. -Like I said,

Agent Macer doesn't work narcotics.

She runs a kidnap response team.

Are you married?

Am I married?

Do you have a husband?

Divorced.

Kids?

No.

Anything else?

No. Thanks, Kate. If you could wait outside, please.

(Sighs)

-Well? -I have no clue.

(Reg) Who are those people? You know?

(Kate) No idea.

(Inaudible)

(Door opens)

Thanks for coming in, guys.

(Clears throat) Will you come back in, Kate?

DOJ wants advisors that focus on cartels involved in pursuing Mr Diaz.

This is Matt Graver. He'll be leading the team.

Isn't this Phoenix homicide now?

No, we're expanding the scope of the investigation a bit.

-You'll act as a liaison. -What does that mean?

They need an agent with tactical experience, like you.

State Department is pulling an agent from the field

that specialises in responding to escalated cartel activity.

You'll be part of the team.

You'll meet up with them at Luke, uh, tomorrow?

-(Matt) Day after. Early. -Air Force Base?

Yeah, we're gonna go see Guillermo.

-Diaz's brother? -That's the one.

Where is he?

Uh, he's in the El Paso area.

What's our objective?

To dramatically over-react.

Kate, you must volunteer for an inter-agency task force.

Think very hard before you respond.

You wanna be a part of this?

Do we get an opportunity at the men responsible for today?

The men who were really responsible for today, yeah.

I'll volunteer.

(Footsteps approaching)

(Boy) Papa!

-Hmm. -Papa!

(Both speaking Spanish)

Si.

No.

(Speaking Spanish)

(Sighs)

(Speaking Spanish)

(Sizzling)

(Dishes clattering)

(Reg) You keep an eye on that doughy prick

with the Flip-flops. I don't trust him.

-How you doin', sir? -ID's?

-She's on the list, you're not. -What's she supposed to do?

-Turn this around for me. -It's fine. It's good.

I'll call you when we're headed back.

-All right. -(Car door closes)

-Morning. -Morning. Am I late?

No, no, no. We just landed. Come on, this way.

My bird dog over there, Alejandro.

-Are we taking this? -Yeah. Only the best for you.

(Engine starts)

(Sighs)

DOD flies you around in private jets now?

Yeah. You guys don't have one of these?

Right.

Is there any food on this flight?

Uh, there's some bitchin' peanuts in the back.

But it's kind of a self-serve deal.

(Footsteps)

-(Door closes) -Kate Macer.

-Have you been to Juárez before? -Uh...

No, I... We're goin' to El Paso, right?

(Groggily) Yeah, amazing. OK.

(Pilot talking indistinctly)

-(Exclaims) -Oh!

Are you OK?

Yeah. I'm fine.

So, um...

So this is your speciality?

Hmm?

The cartels in Mexico are your speciality?

Yeah. Yeah.

Is there anything I should know?

Uh, you're asking me how a watch works.

For now, let's just keep an eye on the time.

OK.

(Whirring)

-How you doin'? -Howdy! How you been?

(Matt) Good, buddy. How you feelin'?

Well, when I pee, it burns.

(Matt) Maybe it's gonorrhoea. What colour is it?

-Yellow with red specks. -(Matt) Red specks or blood?

(Matt) I'm tryin' to get DOD to let me look into this conspiracy to sink Fiji.

Fiji? Leave Fiji alone, terrorists!

(Matt) Exactly. I figure a month or two over there,

we'll get it all worked out.

So who's goin' over there today?

Marshals, DEA... I pulled a team for you, Matt.

I love it when you say "a team". It makes me warm and fuzzy.

They're a crack bunch, too. Just rotated back from Afghanistan.

(Matt) Where's everybody linking up?

-AIC. -(Matt) Good, good, good.

(Man) Mexican Federal Police will meet you at the border

and proceed with you to the courthouse, located here.

This is a high-level target.

The most likely spots for an attempt will be at the exchange

and at the border crossing on the return.

The Marshals will enter...

Kevin, Keith, you wanna stand up?

The Marshals' response team is in Laredo...

Love Texans.

So our friends from Delta have volunteered to come along

and will escort the Marshals on the exchange.

Here's the man of the hour. You comin' with or waitin' here?

We'll take the tour with you. Loan us a couple of pop guns.

This is turning into an all-star affair!

Keith, you want another hand on the exchange?

-(Keith) You sober? -Will be by the time we get there.

Got a bottle in the truck in case your hands get shaky.

I could always count on you, Keith.

(Man) We'll gear you up as soon as we're done.

Matt can be the tip of the spear

and we don't have to rob a guy from Delta.

Now, be careful on the turnaround.

If the Federale is a shooter, it's gonna happen on the turnaround.

Delta's Team One will be the lead vehicle.

Divide Team Two between the carry car and the trail vehicle.

That OK? Good. Now, Delta, if you can identify yourselves

so everyone knows who to hide behind if shit hits the fan.

The most likely spot for a hit

will be at the border crossing on the return.

Anywhere along the way,

anyone not in this room is a potential shooter.

The op isn't over until we get back here.

OK?

Be alert. Be vigilant. And be aware. Let's go.

What?

(Keith) Hey! I thought you were in prison.

-They took me out. -(Laughs)

They needed somebody for this job.

(Keith) For good behaviour or bad behaviour?

Have you ever been over there?

I worked in Juárez.

For the DEA?

No.

For who?

For Mexico.

I was a prosecutor.

-You're not American? -No.

Who do you work for now?

Oh, I go where I'm sent.

Where were you sent from?

Cartagena.

Colombia.

Listen...

Nothing will make sense to your American ears.

And you will doubt everything that we do.

But, in the end, you will understand.

Here, try this on. See if it fits.

Is he CIA? Are you?

-He's a DOD advisor, like me. -No, he's not.

Pay attention to Alejandro. If he says do somethin', do it.

I'm not authorised to follow orders from Alejandro,

-especially in Mexico! -Fine. Then stay here.

But you don't want to, do you?

I just wanna know what I'm getting into.

Kate, you volunteered to get on this train

because you know you're doing nothing in Phoenix.

Yeah, you're just sweeping up a fucking mess.

In six months, every single house you raid

will be rigged with explosives. Do you want to find the guys responsible?

-Yes. -Yes?

Yes!

This is where we start.

Try it on.

(Helicopter blades whirring)

There she is.

The beast.

Juárez.

You know, 1900s, President Taft went to visit President Diaz.

Took 4,000 men with him.

And it almost was called off.

Some guy had a pistol.

Was gonna walk right up to Taft and just blow his brains out.

But it was avoided.

4,000 troops!

Think he felt safe? (Scoffs)

(Siren wailing)

(Siren continues)

(Tyres screeching)

Welcome to Juárez.

(Indistinct shouting)

(Siren wailing)

It's brilliant what they do.

When they mutilate a body like that,

they make people think they must have been involved.

They must have deserved such a death cos they did something.

-Oh, it's brilliant what they do. -(Tyres screeching)

(Distant gunfire)

(Distant yelling in Spanish)

(Gunfire continues)

-You hear that? -(Gunfire continues)

Those aren't firecrackers.

(Matt on radio) Mexicans are adjusting our route.

There's activity ahead, we need to go around.

Everyone hold on.

(Cars honking)

(Siren wailing)

Nothing will happen here.

If they try anything, it will be at the border.

Keep an eye out for the State Police.

They're not always the good guys.

(Car doors close)

(Sirens wailing)

Spotter vehicle, left lane. Left lane!

(Man 1 on radio) Spotter vehicle, nine o'clock.

I'm gettin' a boner.

(Man 1) Is that one of ours?

Watch the right. Watch the right.

(Matt) No, that's a lone wolf.

(Indistinct shouting)

(Man 1) Eyes on rooftops.

(Man 2) Nothing. Rooftops clear.

(Pilot on radio) Bridge is one klick out.

Road is clear. Hotfoot it, gentlemen.

(Car honking)

(Matt) Everyone stay in this lane. Our agents at the border

are waving traffic through to get us over quickly.

(Man 1) Everyone stay frosty.

(Man 2) OK, it's a fuck-up. What are we gonna do now?

(Helicopter hovering)

(Pilot) Here's the deal. A car broke down up ahead.

It's being sorted out, but it's gonna take a while. Standby.

(Man shouting indistinctly)

Get your service weapon out.

Red Impala, two lanes over, on my ten.

Copy that. Red Impala, two lanes left.

(Man 1) Roger that.

Three lanes left. Seven o'clock. Green Civic.

Bring your window down.

-(Alejandro) Gun. -Gun. Gun left!

(Matt) What are the rules here?

(Man 1) We must be engaged to engage.

(Man 2) Permission to get out of the vehicle and set a perimeter?

(Man 1) Stay in your vehicle. You can do what they do.

If they get out, you get out.

(Unlocks doors)

(Dog barking)

(Man 2) Get ready. They can see our lane clearing.

If it's coming, it's coming now.

-(Man 1) Move! -(Kate) Wait, wait, wait.

-Get outta the car. -(Car door closes)

Jesus Christ!

(Helicopter hovering)

(Speaking Spanish)

-(Delta leader) Don't move! -No, no, no, no!

(Alejandro speaking Spanish)

What the fuck are we doing? (Breathes heavily)

Fuck!

(Delta 1) Lane's clear. The lane's clear!

(Delta leader) Don't look at me!

Go! Put your hands behind your head!

-(Delta 2) All clear! -(Delta 3) I got this!

Go, go, go, go, go!

(Delta leader) Let's move, move!

(Man 2 on radio) This is gonna be on the front page of every newspaper in America.

(Chuckles) It won't even make the papers in El Paso.

Clear!

(Police officer speaking Spanish)

Let's go.

Come here.

Let's go.

(Matt chuckles)

(Matt) Got a little nutty, huh?

(Kate) Nutty? Yeah. Yeah, that was fucking illegal.

You wanna start a war? You're a fucking spook!

And him! I mean, who the fuck is that?

Told you, you could stay here.

Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. You just spray bullets at...

Sure there's just fucking civilians everywhere.

I'm not a soldier! This is not what I do!

Whoa! Don't sell yourself short, all right?

The reason Reggie's home is I know he wasn't ready for this.

But he better get ready real quick because this is the future, Kate!

Juárez is what happens when they dig in. This is it!

-What am I doing here? -What you're doing here is giving us

the opportunity to shake the tree and create chaos.

That's what this is!

In the meantime, just sponge everything up you see.

Learn! That's why you're here.

(Gulping)

Guillermo...

You're giving him a belly full of water, you devil.

You didn't think we'd get you here, did you?

No hablo Inglés.

(Matt) No hablo Inglés?

(Matt speaking Spanish)

I love it when they "No hablo Inglés."

You know, I brought an old buddy of yours.

I bet you hablo to him. Yeah.

(Rafael) I didn't know ghosts got thirsty.

I know someone kept him alive for us.

I doubt it was easy.

What's easy these days?

I'm sorry about what happened on the return.

I control only what I can.

(Speaking Spanish)

It's not your fault.

(Both converse in Spanish)

Sí.

There's rumours of a tunnel.

Fausto's main road into Arizona.

If you're doing what I think you're doing,

that's the best place to cross.

If you can find it. But time is against you.

In three days, nobody will be where they are today.

-Shall we? -No, it's better if you don't.

Something happens in that room...

..it's easier to say you didn't see anything.

(Both converse in Spanish)

(Whistles a patriotic tune)

(Whistling continues)

(Door opens)

(Door closes)

Aw, Alejandro, I think he remembers you.

I'm gonna step out.

Timmy...

(Beeps)

(Door closes)

(Speaking Spanish)

(Guillermo speaking Spanish)

(Grunts)

What do you keep lookin' at me for?

"No hablo Inglés," remember?

(Guillermo) No, no.

(Grunts)

(Thudding)

(Guillermo groans)

(Banging continues)

(Grunting)

(Exhales deeply)

Can I have one of those?

Thank you.

(Exhales)

(Door opens)

-You like fireworks? -Huh?

Wanna see something cool?

Come on.

(Distant popping)

Here we go.

Look right there.

(Gunshots)

(Explosion)

(Kate) Unbelievable.

(Man) That's what happens when you chop the head off a chicken.

-(Kate) Yeah. I can see. -(Sirens wailing)

-(Gate clanking) -(Matt) Can you get 'em all in one place?

We just landed back in Phoenix. I'm on a clock, I can't wait.

All right, look, contact Bob Fisks.

Have him hold 'em in the staging area.

Yeah. How long does it take to get to Tucson?

(Kate) From here it's a little over two hours.

All right. We'll be there around 2:00. Yeah.

(Kate) Are we going to Tucson?

Yeah, you gotta learn how to sleep on a plane.

They let me on the base when you need a ride, don't they?

-You OK? -She's fine.

-I didn't ask you. -And yet I answered.

(Whispers) Kate, who's that?

We're goin' to Tucson.

(Bob) What's the deal, Matt? Why you holdin' up my transport?

Don't worry, Bob. We'll be quick.

How's the auditor gonna react to an $8,000 cheque to fuckin' Domino's Pizza?

Don't be so dramatic, OK?

Kate Macer with the FBI. This is her partner. It was her call.

Yeah, it wasn't my call. Have you got another one of those?

Finish it before you get up there.

No problem.

Hey, Kate, tell me what happened in El Paso.

We weren't in El Paso. We were in Mexico.

(Man coughing)

(Bob) I guess we're not following any procedures.

What do you wanna do?

We want to talk to the people caught around the Nogales area.

OK. That group.

This group here. And that group.

OK. They stay and the rest can go.

(Bob) Josef!

(Speaking Spanish)

(Bob) On the bus. Ándale.

(Josef speaking Spanish)

(Indistinct chatter)

What are we looking for?

Just keep watching.

(Alejandro speaking Spanish)

-(Man 1) In Arizona. -Arizona.

(Both converse in Spanish)

Sí.

No?

(Speaking Spanish)

(Man 2 speaking Spanish)

(Both converse in Spanish)

-(Man 1) Arizona. -Arizona...

Talk to me. What are we doing?

-I don't have any answers. -Let's get some, then.

Do you think I haven't asked?

-You think you can do better? -Yeah.

-Go ahead. -Matt, can we talk for a minute?

What's up? Everything OK?

You look very serious.

There's "in the dark" and there's the way you're treating us.

I want to know the objective or I walk, period.

Then go. I didn't ask you to be here. She did.

I walk, too.

-(Matt) What do you wanna know? -Everything.

Fuckin' lawyers.

All right.

Guillermo...

..told us about a tunnel east of Nogales, near Sasabe.

Now we're tryin' to find out what areas near there

migrants avoid so we can find the tunnel.

-That better? -And Guillermo is...

He just told you where the drug tunnel is?

-He just told you? -Guillermo didn't have any other options.

We send him back, he's a dead man.

Now he gets to spend the next 30 years in an American prison,

in relative safety.

(Reggie) Just tell us the truth, man.

We are gonna make enough noise...

..that Manuel Diaz is called back to Mexico to see his boss.

That's the truth.

(Reggie) And then?

And then we know where his boss is.

His name is Fausto Alarcon.

El Verdugo.

Every day across that border, people are kidnapped...

..or killed by his hand or with his blessing.

To find him would be like... discovering a vaccine.

You understand the value of that.

All right, we're good. Just don't keep us in the dark.

Great.

You afraid of the dark?

(Matt) Hey!

It's been a humdinger of a day. Go home. Get some rest.

We'll find our own ride. We'll see you tomorrow!

I just drove a hundred fucking miles.

(Kate) It's a fucking blessing, trust me.

-Got you smokin' again? -Yeah.

(Reggie) Who the fuck's Guillermo?

(Mouse clicks)

(Speaking Spanish)

(Sighs)

Gotta get you a new bra, woman.

(Kate chuckles) The list of things I need...

I'm just saying. Some nice lacy somethin'.

Yeah, it's been a while since someone's seen me in a bra, except you.

Oh, God, don't look at me like that. I don't want your pity.

How was seeing Evan the other day?

I don't know.

-Miss him? -Ask me something else.

You know, I used to see guys like Matt in Iraq.

Gotta be careful around these people.

CIA's not supposed to work this side of the fence.

-He's a DOD advisor. -You really believe that?

You need somebody watching your six, cos I promise you, they aren't.

You know, we're not even scratching the surface,

doing what we're doing.

And they are.

Mm. Well, you sure picked the motherfuckers to show us.

(Door unlocks)

What's the password?

Moron.

(Alejandro speaking Spanish)

(Speaking Spanish)

(Speaking Spanish)

This is our spot.

-(All) No way! No, no. -(Man laughing)

No, no, no.

(Man 1 speaking)

(Whispers) Are you getting this?

Mmm-hmm.

(Speaking Spanish)

Sí.

(Indistinct talking)

That's our way across.

So Guillermo was tellin' the truth.

(Softly) It's gonna be a good day.

Hey, Kate. Got any friends at Phoenix SWAT?

Yeah, we use them in breaches all the time.

Good, cos we're gonna need their help. -What for?

-We are gonna fuck with Manuel Diaz's wallet.

(Matt clears throat)

(Whistles)

(Matt) This is our Smurf, guys. Blonde hair, white purse.

-You know the Heimlich? -Oh, yeah.

She tries to eat that receipt, Heimlich it right out of her.

-Copy that. -(Matt exhales)

There she goes. All right, go get 'em, tiger.

Take 'em.

(Exhales)

(Man) Hands to the wheel! Hands to the wheel! Get down!

Hold still! Hold still!

-(Grunts) -Whoa!

You want bank computers for evidence?

No, no. Just the money.

But freeze all his accounts, everything.

Even if his dog opened an account, freeze it.

(Police radio chatter)

What you got?

Got a mobile money launderer.

Pack it up.

Come on. Come on!

-You coming? -No, don't go in the bank.

This is something we can actually build a case on.

Don't go in the bank, Kate!

There you go and she's goin' in the bank.

(Inaudible)

(Kate) These are all Manuel Diaz's accounts?

(Man) Yeah. Cash deposits made daily in $9,000 increments.

So it doesn't have to be reported.

-That's right. -And you can seize those?

I already have. I'll go through these wire transfer numbers

and freeze all these accounts as well.

Here you go.

-(Man) Oh, damn, that's smart. -(Kate) What?

This is a bank line of credit.

See, you make payments over what you owe.

It doesn't show up as cash, it shows up as a negative loan balance.

It's never reported to anyone. IRS, DEA...

This money is invisible.

How much does he have?

Take a look.

Oh, my God.

They just seized $17 million.

-It's a bogus bust, Kate. -What?

No-one controls who deposits money in an account.

An attorney will have that back, but a lot of heads will roll...

We can arrest Manuel now. We can get him off the street.

We gotta get Manuel called back to Mexico.

We have no jurisdiction in Mexico.

We have nothing. We need to do something now.

Can't arrest him.

(Laughs)

(Excited shrieking)

(Children giggling)

What?

(Man) When?

Wait a minute.

(Children exclaiming)

(Inaudible TV report)

Mmm-hmm.

$9,000 is deposited into this account every day,

in cash, for five years.

It's not illegal. It's suspect, but it isn't illegal.

I think the IRS might think it's illegal.

What do you want? What'd you like done?

I want to follow some semblance of procedure.

That's what I want. To build a prosecutable case.

We prosecuted more felony drug cases in this region last year

than in the two previous years combined.

Are you feeling that on the street?

You getting the vibe that we're winning?

No.

Do you?

No, sir, I don't.

Advisors like Matt come in, they stir the pot,

they cause the criminals to react and make mistakes.

That's how we build cases against the individuals

that actually make a difference in this fight.

It's when they're nervous, when they stop trusting their crews,

when they move their money.

These are all opportunities to strike.

And that's the purpose of people like Matt.

Kate, this isn't something that I dreamed up myself.

I don't have the authority to hire advisors

or authorise joint-agency missions,

or fly agents from Air Force bases.

Are you understanding me?

These decisions are made far from here

by officials elected to office, not appointed to them.

So, if your fear is operating out of bounds,

I am telling you, you are not.

The boundary's been moved.

Are we clear?

Yes, sir.

I need a fucking drink.

-Where do you wanna go? -Anywhere.

(Sighs)

(Country music playing)

I'm gonna go get a table.

-I guess it's on me. -Thanks.

-What'll it be? -Two beers.

Coming up.

Thank you.

I want a cigarette so bad.

Macer?

Yeah?

See, I hate to go on about this, but...

I think the bra situation's the least of your problems.

-OK. -Cos you look like shit.

-(Laughs) -You do. You look like shit.

Everybody on the team's talkin' about it.

"Kate used to be a number one draft pick.

"Now look at her. She looks like fuckin' shit."

Look at you. Your eyebrows are a mess.

-No, they're not! -They're like wild beasts.

-You're losing weight. -I'm eating.

Look at you. What is it, one T-shirt a week?

At least work on your personal hygiene, huh?

-You sound like my mother. -Maybe I am your mother.

First we work on personal hygiene,

then we move on to the shopping.

Get you some potatoes, yeah? Eat some food...

Where have you taken me? What is this place?

It's a bar.

It's full of cowboys.

I'm a cowboy.

-You're a redneck? -I'm a redneck. Got a trailer.

-Got a wife. (Chuckles) -What are you talking about?

I got a trailer, I got a wife. She's my sister.

-(Both laugh) -(Man) Big Reg.

-Ted, man! -What's goin' on, man?

-How you been? -It's good to see you.

-Good to see you. -Gettin' your groove on, huh?

No, man. We just started. We just got here.

All right. You, uh...

-Gonna introduce me, man? -Oh.

-Ted, Phoenix PD, Kate, my partner. -How you doin'?

-Just Ted's fine. -I saw you play softball once.

-Softball? -(Chuckles)

She was at the game, Ted.

"The game"? Aw!

Where you struck out in slow-pitch softball.

-You played really well. -Yeah, I appreciate that.

I'm gonna head back to that bar now.

-(Both laugh) -Can I get y'all another round?

-Yeah, sure. -All right.

Ted, he's a good guy.

Mmm-hmm.

Divorced.

(Country and western music)

(Indistinct chatter)

(All laugh)

(Indistinct chatter resumes)

(Laughing)

(Crowd whooping)

(Both laugh)

(Breathing heavily)

Just give me one second. I'll be right with you.

(Both laugh)

All right.

Just wait, wait, wait a second...

What, what, what? Is that too much?

Wait one minute. I just need a second.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

(Sighs)

Hey, Kate?

Hey! Hey, come here. Stop, stop, stop. Talk to me.

Just talk to me. OK? Relax. OK? Just take it...

Whoa, shit!

Kate... What is it?

What? What? Stop.

Stop. Stop. Shit.

-Don't... -What the fuck are you...?

-(Groans) Goddamn! -What the fuck...?

Goddamn!

You fuckin' try to shoot me? You fuckin' crazy?

(Grunts)

-Stop that! -Get off me!

-(Grunts) -Fuck that...

Damn it, Kate! Just fucking stop!

Stop!

Stop, bitch!

Stop! Fuck!

Fuckin' stop!

(Gasps)

-Stop. Sh! -(Gasps)

Sh! Fuck!

Fuck!

(Gasps)

This is you, you hear me? You did this. You did this.

Psst!

(Kate coughs)

You used me as bait.

Nah, you used yourself as bait.

I told you not to go in the bank.

You brought him back here, though. That was smart.

Yeah. Love how we're gonna pretend like I planned this.

Why don't you just write that in your report?

Come on! This is good news!

They're gonna call Manuel back soon.

Isn't that the point?

(Police radio chatter)

(Kate) It's OK, Reg.

-I thought he was a friend. -I know.

-Want me to stay tonight? -No. I'm good.

-You sure? -I'm good.

(Ted) How y'all want me to talk to you when you keep fuckin' hittin' me?

How many other corrupt motherfuckers

are you workin' with on this side of the border?

All right. Look...

It's exactly what I told you, all right? They just...

They came to me.

They wanted details about our case.

I gave it to them, but I never wanted anybody to get hurt.

I would never have gotten involved with them pieces of shit...

Aah! Fuck! OK!

(Groans) OK! Fuck! OK! Fuck!

(Matt) "OK, OK, OK," is not what we're lookin' for, Ted.

You know what the beauty is of you being so beat to a pulp?

Cos no-one's gonna notice a few more scratches.

This is a new deal, Ted.

(Pants)

I decide whether your daughter'll get Federal protection...

Aw, fuck...

Or whether we post your ex-wife's address on the internet.

I decide whether you go to prison

in a work camp in Missouri...

..or a kill house like Corcoran.

All right.

This is where you negotiate how to survive, my friend.

(Sighs)

OK. Look...

I...I...

I feel like this whole thing's just gotten away from me.

You know, I just... I fucked up.

OK, I fucked up and I'm in over my fuckin' head right now.

I'm sorry... Aah!

Fuck! Get it out! Get it the fuck out!

(Groaning)

Fuck! Get it the fuck out!

Get it out! Motherfucker! And fuck you!

Fuck!

How many officers do they have working on the force?

I'll tell you everything you wanna know.

You just gotta promise me that my daughter's gonna be safe, OK?

You make me that promise.

You want the truth?

Please.

Give me all the names...

..of all the motherfuckers they got working on the force.

OK, OK.

-All right? -OK.

OK.

So which phone do we start with?

It's in that one. It's that shitty one.

-That's the shitty one? -Yes, sir!

(Keypad beeping)

(Alejandro) How you feelin'?

-Better. -Uh-huh.

Well, you should've shot him.

I just tried to have sex with my hit man.

Nah. He's no assassin.

He just wanted to know what you know.

They're after us, not you.

Thank you.

You remind me of someone very special to me.

Hmm.

Hmm. Get some rest.

Tomorrow they'll call Manuel Diaz back to Mexico

and we'll cut a leg from them.

(Door opens)

(Door closes)

(Police radio chatter)

(Radio static)

(Man 1 on radio) Hello, 60.

(Indistinct radio chatter)

(Man 2 on radio) We have eyes on the objective.

Can we get a closer visual?

Ten metres going down east of the ridge.

(Boy) Papa?

(Speaking Spanish)

-Football? -Sí, Papa.

(Speaking Spanish)

No!

(TV on)

-Come on in. Tasty beverage? -(Gunshots on TV)

-(Turns TV off) -OK, boys.

(Kate) What's going on? What's the plan?

We're going hunting.

Looks like Manuel Diaz is being called back to Mexico.

Just waiting for confirmation.

There's the tunnel right there.

(Delta leader) All right, listen up.

Let's clarify the op.

We're gonna drive to location...

-How are you? -Good. How are you?

-I'm fine. -How's the neck?

-It's better, thank you. -Good, good.

The diagrams are based on other tunnels that have been mapped.

They're for reference only, they're not accurate.

Once on the Mexican side of the border,

there'll be a small staging area.

Another shaft will lead to the main warehouse

and the road that returns to Mexico.

Once we clear the mules,

we don't expect more than a dozen bandits.

No. They use Mexican police for vehicle transport.

If you see a uniform in the tunnel, consider him a bandit.

OK. This is... Uh, you want to discuss ROE?

Nah, we'll save that for later.

OK. This is an in and out. We're clearing, placing an agent.

It's all about creating a diversion.

Want the mother of all diversions, boys.

Need a lot of noise.

-Fourth of July on steroids. -(Laughing)

(Delta leader) All right. Weapons check. Let's go, boys.

(Indistinct radio chatter)

This looks like confirmation.

(Indistinct radio chatter)

-I need to fit your guy with a locator. -Yeah, do it.

-Are we going in on this? -You aren't dressed for it.

You didn't fuckin' tell us.

Well, you two went cryin' to Daddy yesterday.

Oh, give me a fucking break!

All right, we'll get you some extra gear.

-We have tac gear in the car. -All right. Good.

-Hang back when we get there. -Then why are we going?

Cos CIA can't operate within US borders...

(Both) Without a domestic agency attached.

I told you you'd be useful.

So that's it. That's why I'm here.

Yeah, that's it. That's why you're here.

Hey, we find any drugs, you guys get to confiscate 'em.

It's gonna be a big day.

Un-fucking real!

-Front and back. -Kate.

Kate, come on. Fuck these people, man.

They've been using us. We don't have to do this.

I need to know what they used us for.

-Doesn't matter what! -Yes, it does!

I say we walk.

We walk and make them eat this whole fucked-up operation.

No. I have to know.

(Man on radio) Black Mercedes. Plate number: Romeo-India-November

three-one-Bravo-seven. Heading south by southeast.

(Thunder rumbling)

(Beeping)

(Matt) Where?

-OK. -(Mobile phone beeps)

We gotta hit the tunnel the minute we get on the ground.

Pretty exciting, huh?

(Thunder rumbling)

(Matt) What is target's location?

(Man on radio) 14 miles south of Nogales heading west, rapidly.

(Indistinct chatter)

Keep your fuckin' safeties on, barrels pointed down.

Stay in the back.

Don't shoot anyone on my fuckin' team. Right?

(Thunder rumbling)

(Indistinct conversation)

(Whirring)

(Delta leader) Gear check.

Thermal camera, check. Night vision goggles, check.

-(Delta 1) Get those guys. -Wanna take Alpha squad?

-Yeah. Let's do it. -(Delta leader) Let's go, boys.

(Delta leader) Control, you copy?

(Man on radio) Roger, Alpha. We read.

(Indistinct chatter)

(Man on radio) 50 metres. Your three o'clock, Alpha.

(Delta leader on radio) Standby. Getting close to objective.

(Man on radio) Alpha, Bravo, be advised.

12 metres straight ahead.

(Matt) All right, we need to boogie

and we need to do it quiet till we find the centre.

(Alejandro) Draw the fighters to you and make some noise.

Don't follow me. I'll be fine.

(Delta leader) What are the rules of engagement?

(Matt) Weapons-free, my friend. Weapons-free.

(Delta leader) Weapons-free, boys.

(Matt) Good luck.

(Man) Oh, God!

(Thudding)

(Indistinct shouting)

-(Knife slashing) -(Man groaning)

(Thudding)

(Guns firing)

(Indistinct shouting)

(Indistinct shouting continues)

(Man shouting)

-You OK? -My gun!

Leave it. Stay on my six.

(Gunfire continues)

(Speaking Spanish)

(Speaking Spanish)

(Echoing gunfire)

(Gunshots)

(Speaking Spanish)

(Gunshot)

(Speaking Spanish)

(Gun clatters)

(Speaking Spanish)

Freeze!

-Step away from him. -(Alejandro) Put that down.

I mean it! Move away from him right now!

(Gasps)

Don't ever point a weapon at me again.

-(Gasps) -Catch your breath.

Then get back up there.

(Car door closes)

(Engine starts)

(Tyres screeching)

(Speaking Spanish)

I am through. Do you have my location?

(Man on radio) Roger, we have you.

Target is east and north of you. Looks like Highway 56 to 17.

Will intercept him if he stays on 17.

Go east on 56 off Highway 2.

Wilco.

(Both converse in Spanish)

(Matt) Is he through yet?

(Man on radio) We have joy. GPS is transmitting.

Audio is transmitting. Should intercept in 20.

(Matt) That was a clean, clean fucking op, my friend.

(Delta leader) Except for these two assholes.

You're better overseas. You don't have to baby-sit.

-Where's Kate? -I thought she was with you.

We gotta go back.

Oh, shit. Boys, we're missin' one. Let's go.

(Wheezes)

-(Grunts) -(Matt) Hey!

-(Delta 1) Whoa, whoa! -(Grunts)

(Groans)

Just lay back, baby. Let it happen.

-Stop. Stop moving. -(Grunts) Get off me!

Stop moving! Stop!

(Pants)

Stop it.

Just relax. Just relax.

All right? Are you gonna stay there?

-(Grunts) -Are you gonna stay there?

(Groans)

All right.

Now, you listen.

You went up the wrong tunnel.

You saw things you shouldn't have seen.

What is Medellín?

Medellín?

Medellín refers to a time...

.. when one group controlled every aspect of the drug trade.

Providing a measure of order that we could control.

Until somebody finds a way to convince 20% of the population

to stop snorting and smoking that shit...

.. order's the best we can hope for.

And what you saw up there

was Alejandro working toward returning that order.

Alejandro works for the fucking Colombian Cartel.

He works for the competition.

Alejandro works for anyone

who will point him toward the people who made him.

Us.

Them.

Anyone who will turn him loose.

So he can get the person that cut off his wife's head...

..and threw his daughter into a vat of acid.

Yeah.

That's what we're dealing with.

You can't do this.

You can't.

I'm sure as shit not the person you're gonna hide it all behind.

-You need to take a breath. -I'm gonna fuckin' talk.

-No, you're not. -Yeah.

(Groans)

I'm gonna tell everyone what you did.

That would be a major mistake.

Is that the target up ahead? Confirm.

(Man on radio) Roger that. Black Mercedes, 60 metres ahead.

(Speaking Spanish)

(Siren wailing)

This motherfucker...

(Speaking Spanish)

(Speaking Spanish)

(Speaking Spanish, amplified)

(Speaking Spanish)

(Speaking Spanish)

(Alejandro speaking)

(Silvio speaking)

(Manuel speaking Spanish)

(Gun clatters)

(Gunfire)

(Groaning)

(Groans)

(Grunts)

(Manuel speaking Spanish)

(Guard speaking Spanish)

(Silenced gunshot)

What happens when we get to the house?

You'll stop the car, I'll get out.

What will happen to me?

Slow down.

Señor Diaz?

(Silenced gunshots)

(Man on radio) Six remain.

We're going blind.

(Silenced gunshots)

(Bullet shells clattering)

(Crockery clinking)

(Fausto speaking Spanish)

Hmm?

No.

Every night you have families killed.

And yet, here you dine.

Tonight should be no different.

(Speaking Spanish)

Do you think the people that sent you here are any different?

Who do you think we learned it from?

The grieving lawyer.

Your wife, you think she'd be proud of what you've become?

Don't forget about my daughter.

Ah, sí.

(Speaking Spanish)

(Speaking Spanish)

Not in front of my boys.

(Weeps)

(Speaking Spanish)

(Clattering)

(Thudding)

(Exhales deeply)

Go ahead and finish your meal.

(Fausto groans)

(Gurgling)

(Gunshot)

(Footsteps approaching)

(Alejandro) I would recommend not standing on balconies for a while, Kate.

(Stubs out cigarette)

Sit down.

You look like a little girl when you're scared.

You remind me of the daughter they took away from me.

(Sighs)

I need you to sign this piece of paper.

It basically says

that everything we did was done by the book.

(Clicks pen)

I can't sign that.

Sign it.

(Softly) It's OK. It's OK.

I can't sign that.

God!

You would be committing suicide, Kate.

Come on. Sign it.

(Writing)

You should move to a small town...

(Pen clicks)

..where the rule of law still exists.

You will not survive here.

You are not a wolf.

And this is the land of wolves now.

(Gun clatters)

(Door opens)

(Door closes)

(Gun cocking)

(Dog barking)

(Man speaking Spanish)

(Children yelling)

(Whistle blows)

Oh!

(Cheering)

(Distant gunshots)

(Gunshots continue)

(Whistle blows)

(Denis Villeneuve) I was born as a film-maker,

driving around the world.

I've seen a lot.

The more I've been in contact with people from other cultures,

the more I felt that the world was complex

and know there was no black and white.

Cinema is a fantastic tool to explore that complexity.

To try to understand what is happening.

Sicario was an exploration of that complexity.

When I read Sicario for the first time,

I thought that it was one of

the strongest and most powerful

screenplays I ever read.

(Taylor Sheridan) It's a visual art

and it begins and ends with the photography

and him making his own interpretation of the scenes.

(Denis) Action!

And then you just have layers upon layers upon layers

of interpretation that magnify the effect.

(Denis) Sicario is a journey through darkness

and through the darkest side of human beings.

About how far should we go as a society to protect ourself?

You know what the beauty is of you being so beat to a pulp?

Cos no-one's gonna notice a few more scratches.

I would love the audience to feel

that what they are seeing on the screens

feels as real as possible.

FBI!

That's the way I will approach location.

That's the way I'll approach violence.

That's the way I will approach action as well.

I want to create cinematic moments

-that will have a freshness to it. -(Grunts)

There's, of course, sequences in the movie

that will be beautiful, and strong challenges.

As a film-maker, it's gonna be exciting

and in the same time, I think deep...deeply stressful.

(Inaudible)

(Roger Deakins) The visuals, they're not designed overnight.

I like to start off with a general conversation

about a script, you know, with a director.

Then Denis will get a lot of images from all sorts of different places.

(Patrice Vermette) So I start doing a collage of

every set or every mood or idea for some of the scenes.

The drug war, it's well documented.

There's some really gritty,

disgusting stuff that happens over there.

Patrice Vermette and Renée April, my costume and production designers,

they are making massive research for Sicario,

like if we were doing a documentary.

(Sam Hudecki) When we would draw reference from photos, or Patrice's work,

certain things that really hit the mood of the film

were very influential.

(Sirens)

In this case, I brought a lot of work by Alex Webb.

Alex Webb had actually shot a whole series of pictures

about this subject in Mexico and on the border in the '80s.

I thought his sense of composition

and use of colour is pretty amazing.

(Patrice) Roger brought in the idea of Alex Webb.

The way that the light works on the character and the colours,

there's like light and then there's darkness.

(Sam) It's kind of like watching a photograph develop

in the chemical bath as you start to see

the mood of the film emerge through that process.

Denis' films are a constantly evolving animal

and the storyboards are only a piece of the puzzle.

(Roger) We wanted to introduce Kate,

in some kind of graphic way, introduce what's happening.

We had storyboarded that and there were very specific shots

for that whole sequence inside the SWAT vehicle.

(Sam) So with Kate's character, you begin with

that very first scene with just her eye.

And there's immediately a contrast between light and dark.

That was the moment that I could see a twinkle in Denis' eyes,

as the film was really...started to come into focus for him.

Denis wanted this sense of the light

and there's no way you could do it in the real SWAT vehicle.

So Patrice built a kind of very rudimentary box set.

Basically, you don't see anything of the inside anyway,

so it's just a wooden shape.

We put it on a turntable and we had a lamp on a crane

so you could manipulate it to get those shafts of light coming through the window.

Completely unreal, but it's just part of that introduction of the character

and, you know, expressive way of getting that light and the dark.

It's metaphorical for what's our perception of what's good and not.

(Denis) For Sicario, the idea was to be as authentic as possible.

To feel that we are very, very close to reality.

With Roger Deakins and Patrice Vermette,

my production designer and cinematographer,

we aim for that kind of authenticity.

(Patrice) We looked at where the actual action takes place with Roger and Denis

and the producers, and then we looked around New Mexico,

Albuquerque area to see if it was a possible match.

(Denis) For Sicario, we choose to shoot in New Mexico.

I need landscapes that will have a relationship with the horizon.

I want the characters to be lost in the emptiness.

Landscapes that will be almost a character in the film.

The border of Mexico and the United States for me,

it says a long of things about our world.

This idea that just beside the biggest democracy of the world,

a Frisbee away, you know, you have this chaos.

A place where the laws are not followed any more.

(Kate) Unbelievable.

(Man) That's what happens when you chop the head off a chicken.

(Distant sirens and gunfire)

(Denis) I needed those helicopter shots

because I wanted the audience to understand the geography.

Understand the power of that landscape.

Understand the geography of the action

and also the absurdity of seeing a landscape that is the same,

but is divided just by a line.

It's a very powerful image.

Alejandro's journey after the tunnel with Silvio,

we storyboarded not knowing exactly where things would take place.

(Roger) We were based in Albuquerque

and it was quite a strong monsoonal season that year.

So we ended up with all these kind of amazing skies

that we hadn't expected.

Silvio's police car going into the background,

the production manager or somebody said

there was a weather alert and that we had to wrap.

(Sam) Denis had this idea

that there is an emotional beat in the film he wanted to hit.

And they found a real thunderstorm to drive into,

which is spectacular and completely unpredictable.

(Roger) That was just a shot we did before everybody wrapped,

with a bolt of lightning going straight down

that gives the landscape character.

(Thunderclap)

-Roll sound! -Rolling!

(Edward L McDonnell) We're outdoors in a lot of sunshine.

Roger and Denis created a world

where even in the sunshine, bad things happen.

(Explosion)

(Denis) This desert is inspiring, fantastic

and tough, rough on the body.

-And cut! -Everybody's tired right now.

I'm very tired right now because we spent days

in the harsh conditions.

The light is very raw.

I said to Roger,

"How can we embrace it, instead of fighting it?

The brutality of that sun and bring our characters,

like silhouettes in this harsh sun?"

Roger totally agreed and loved the idea.

You're actually dealing with the real world. A real subject.

I try and create a kind of naturalism,

so you feel you're in the real world in some way,

even when it's stylised.

I think you really want the audience to connect with it,

in the sense that...

Yeah, it feels like that is something

that could...and is happening.

(Denis) I like the idea that we will do a movie with a lot of contrast.

And this idea of going in the total opposite direction

in that the night will be a deep dark.

We'll need more the knife to see in the night.

We embrace that contrast.

(Sam) The tunnel sequence had a distinct set of challenges to it

because it was from dusk to night.

As you got into the tunnel more deeply,

I think it really became a transition of light to dark.

(Daniel Kaluuya) It was pitch-black, even when we was

in the outside of the tunnels, we were shooting in darkness.

There was one little bit of light,

just to kind of see stuff.

All the cars weren't allowed headlights on. Darkness.

(Roger) All this is taking place at night

and all the characters have to work,

wear these image enhancers of one shape or another so they can see.

So you can't really shoot it in an objective way

with a kind of Hollywood moonlight effect,

because that doesn't make any sense at all.

If you the audience can see it, then the characters can see it,

so why are they wearing all these silly things?

There's a whole sequence that is shot in total darkness.

But when I say in total darkness,

I mean we were shooting in deep dark.

We were using a thermal camera and an infra-red camera

and those cameras were obviously able to see in deep night.

We couldn't just do it with standard night-vision.

That would all look too samey.

Then we started experimenting with infra-red

and found this company who had this really fantastic infra-red camera

that we could actually follow the footprints down the stairs.

The prop man actually heated up his boots

and walked down in front of us as we did that shot.

(Sam) Night-vision represented different characters.

Kate would look at Reggie in her green night-vision

and Alejandro had the dark infra-red vision.

Basically, it's like going scuba diving in the desert, you know

in the total darkness.

That brought a tension that I was looking for

in this specific sequence.

There was this idea of my main character going into Mexico

and having a first glimpse at Juárez, the chaos of Juárez.

That, I felt, had a strong cinematic potential.

(Edward) We visited Juárez, which is a very scary place right now.

You could tell that it was a city that had suffered

an enormous amount of damage due to the cartels.

I remember asking the Federales when we went there,

"What's the good part of town? What's the bad part?"

"The good part is where they're not killing anyone."

(Denis) It was not possible to shoot in Juárez, it was too much violence.

It was very, very, very important

for Patrice, Roger and I to shoot in Mexico.

Because I wanted to embrace that culture.

I wanted to feel the reality of this culture.

Mexico City is such a huge city that, on its outskirts,

it's very similar to what we can find in Juárez.

(Denis) There's a fair amount of use of different kind of colours in the film

that were inspired by what we can see

when we arrive in Mexico.

The use of those bright colours and this contrast

of this joy coming from the colour

and the violence in the country was so striking.

The US side is very beige. It's a very corporate look.

When you go to Mexico, it's a bit more of a free-for-all.

Anarchy. Chaos.

And that is something that we tried to exploit in the movie,

-in the design. -You hear that?

(Distant popping)

Those aren't firecrackers.

-(Tyres screech) -There's a vicious drive into Juárez.

One of the first questions that we had beginning the storyboards

was what the pacing and what the feeling was going to be.

Spotter vehicle, left lane. Left lane.

(Sam) Roger is so strong as a visual storyteller.

So that when we're working on the framing of shots,

the ways that the camera will move,

we would discuss the pace from frenetic action through Juárez.

Through driving trucks. Through seeing buildings whip past.

So catching pieces of it,

an awareness of how the camera is also a character.

Staying with Kate,

that brings you into the action, through her character's perspective.

And then we would get to this...to being stuck.

When you're stuck, you can't really move around.

(Helicopter whirs)

Get your service weapon out.

(Molly Smith) There's an incredible sequence,

as they're coming across the border.

It all happens in about 90 seconds onscreen.

Months and months of planning and building and design.

(Denis) It was impossible to shoot

on the Bridge of the Americas, where the action will take place.

For obvious security reasons, since 9/11,

it's not possible any more to shoot on those bridges.

Roger Deakins and Patrice and Denis and everyone

putting our heads together, figuring out how to shoot this

in an epic, intense way.

(Patrice) It's a pivot in a story, in Kate's journey,

how she is being transformed by what's happening.

That's the main set that needed to be...

You know, it was specific.

It needed to be that and nothing else.

The real place is on the US side.

There's 14 booths and there's a lotta, lotta, lotta traffic.

The traffic doesn't move.

We realised that, you know, economically,

we could never build that.

(Jan Pascale) Patrice sent me a drawing of

how he envisioned the border crossing.

I think he really distilled what was necessary...

..for the shot, but created that claustrophobic, trapped feeling.

(Patrice) That is the first beat before going back to United States,

that toll booth.

The fact that there's border agents rushing into the scene,

so those booths are the excuse for those agents to rush to the scene.

It's also the excuse for the traffic to slow down.

(Trent Luckinbill) We built a replica of the border crossing in El Paso,

complete with the Bridge of the Americas.

Going over, that looks as if you're there.

(Jan) We laid tarmac and then discerning

what would be visual effects and what would be real.

And creating the toll booths and then our amazing painters,

with striping and ageing and oil stains.

I mean, it just takes so many levels to make it look real.

But then achieving it was a whole other issue.

The hardest scene in the film

was the shootout at the border post,

when they're coming back from Mexico.

(Denis) I'm deeply inspired and excited to work with Roger.

The only way to work with such a master

is to try to flirt with disaster.

I want Roger to be deeply inspired.

(Roger) He's shooting that way, this way, all this action.

So that was something we storyboarded in quite considerable detail.

So much of it was played from Emily's point of view

and she's sitting in the back of a car.

It's important you build up at the beginning who's the bad guy

and who's not and there's all the civilians in between,

you know, the two parties.

The camera was static for quite a bit of that.

It comes down to being locked in a place where you are unable to move

and staying with Kate, you're only able to see what you can.

-Get outta the car! -(Roger) It's that confusion,

I think, when, you know, the confrontation,

and the guys, and they get shot.

You're in... The camera can justifiably come in

to see it more clearly and see the horror of what's happening.

(Molly) The action that is in here is so intense

and so real for the characters in the moment that I think

it's gonna knock the audience back because it's frightening.

What the fuck?

(Emily Blunt) I think that this film is trying to explore

the space between good and bad, between right and wrong.

(Trent Luckinbill) Morality gets challenged

in a way with each of the characters.

(Daniel Kaluuya) The way the characters are painted,

are so intriguing that you want to continue to watch.

When you cast the right actor for the right part,

then there will be an explosion of life in front of the camera.

(Thad Luckinbill) You find yourself inside these characters,

in understanding their dilemmas.

I think that's the beautiful thing Sicario dives into.

Freeze!

-(Indistinct shouting) -(Kate) FBI!

(Grunting)

(Emily) Kate Macer, she's an FBI agent.

She also runs a hostage rescue team.

She's really the moral compass of the film.

She likes to do things in the right way.

She does things by the book.

(Denis Villeneuve) Kate Macer witnessed that the violence

coming from the south is growing and coming closer, closer to her own town.

She feels she has less and less power against that violence.

This character that's starting to doubt about their own ways of doing things.

Kate, you must volunteer for an inter-agency task force.

Do we get an opportunity at the men responsible for today?

The men who were really responsible for today, yeah.

I'll volunteer.

Where Kate is fighting with American morality

and American rules of justice, her enemies,

the cartels, have none of that.

They have no rules, no laws, no morals.

(Trent) She gets thrust into this team

that's looking more holistically and globally at

a particular cartel that they're trying to eliminate.

Aaah! Fuck! OK!

(Emily) They do things completely illegally.

There is the constant pull and the magnet towards that world

where she sees the benefit of what they do in some ways.

The great conflict about the character, which is fun to play,

is that there's a sort of temptation with this world,

with the CIA and how they do things.

I think the audience are looking at this through Kate's eyes

and asked to question their moral compass,

as to what they would do in this situation.

(Alejandro) Are you married?

Divorced.

Kids?

No.

Anything else?

(Taylor Sheridan) I've had a lot of people ask why did I make Kate a woman?

And as I was coming up with these characters,

I thought that a man would be less likely

to stand by their principles in that circumstance.

I believe that a woman would not be as willing

to allow the end to justify the means.

When I'm creating this character,

who looks weak at times...

She's not weak, she just is in a world she doesn't understand

and she's unwilling to bend the rules as she's been taught them

and we perceive that as weakness.

When Denis signed on

and we started looking for an actress to play it,

there was a fear that the character would come across as weak.

My argument was, "An actress is gonna read this role

and see everything that other people were seeing

as a weakness as a strength." She came on very quickly.

What do you want, Kate? What'd you like done?

I want to follow some semblance of procedure.

That's what I want. To build a prosecutable case.

We prosecuted more felony drug cases in this region last year

than in the two previous years combined.

Are you feeling that on the street?

No.

I just admired the character.

I thought she represented that morality in an amoral world.

I think to see that line and that person disintegrate

over the next three days was going to be challenging.

-I was excited. -(Denis) Ready? And action!

I was looking for a young actress that will have the strength and the ability

to portray that FBI agent that will be believable.

Someone that... without losing her femininity.

Cut!

(Denis) I knew Emily had that inner strength that I was looking for.

It's also a very tough part

because, as the witness of this operation,

she has to do a lot of things in her eyes, without saying things.

She has to make the audience understand the path of her character.

Emily is a very precise and subtle actress.

(Emily) She's a character who you don't have much to go on.

So Kate became my invention and my take on her,

so the most informative thing for me

was speaking to four female FBI agents.

They were very honest, very open about what that lifestyle is.

The certain kind of personality you need to have

in order to be a woman in law enforcement.

The kind of courage you need and I saw Kate as somebody...

There's a steeliness and a strength,

but she's actually quite shy.

The woman that I based her on was one of these FBI agents,

who was quite shy, actually, quite socially a bit awkward.

I thought that was a good take for this character.

She's someone who's thrust into a vulnerable position.

Yet she's highly skilled at what she normally does.

So it was just trying to find that fine line

between vulnerability and strength.

The border crossing scene's where you see the first time

the character starts to truly disintegrate,

because she comes from a world

where she's held accountable for every bullet she fires.

She's in this land where people just spray bullets.

She has to shoot somebody during the border battle to survive.

(Thad) The convoy trip was so traumatic.

I mean, I think the rules she lives by,

the rules she was trained with as a law enforcement,

have gone away and she realises that she's in a new world and she's lost.

(Silenced gunfire)

(Benicio Del Toro) "Sicario" would be the equivalent of

a hit man for a drug cartel.

(Denis) "Sicario" has a very powerful and scary meaning in Spanish

and it's the job of one of my main characters.

For me, Alejandro is the soul of the movie.

Through Kate's eyes, we will slowly discover him

and learn about this past, about what he was before.

And, more important, what he is now.

Listen...

Nothing will make sense to your American ears.

And you will doubt everything that we do.

But, in the end, you will understand.

(Benicio) My character Alejandro used to be a prosecutor

and his family was killed in the drug wars.

He's become sort of an assassin against the drug lords.

Especially the ones that had something to do with the killing of his family.

(Emily) There's a sadness about him

and you realise what a great loss he's suffered

and, therefore, what's driving his need for revenge.

(Denis) I think he's someone who lost his soul.

Someone that is the result of a tremendous amount of violence.

He's someone that is a ghost.

(Alejandro) I would recommend not standing on balconies for a while, Kate.

(Taylor) He's the consequence of the innocence Kate possesses.

People think that his connection to Kate

is because she reminds him of his daughter or his wife.

But what she really reminds him of is himself,

when he was young and idealistic.

And his attempt to educate her

is to prevent her from becoming what he's become.

You should move to a small town...

You will not survive here.

You're not a wolf.

And this is the land of wolves now.

(Benicio) It's tough to say if he's a good guy or a bad guy.

Denis and myself, we like playing with that as much as we can.

(Denis) I knew that I would need an actor

that would bring the necessary soul to this part.

Alejandro is not a very talkative character.

And Benicio, without saying nothing,

just by his presence, by just the way he moves on the screen

brings a lot of tension.

I'm gonna step out.

(Emily) Benicio, we've seen him play these very unleashed sort of roles.

This is incredibly quiet and still and suppressed

and it's been exciting in that way to work with him.

He brings ambiguity to what he does.

You sort of have to kind of look closer, you know.

I feel myself doing that in scenes with him as well.

The threat of Alejandro is

that you just don't know what's gonna happen next.

He carries a weight of... He's seen some stuff.

(Roger Deakins) He's a real film actor

in that way I would've said about Robert Mitchum.

They don't do a lot, but it's there.

There's a sort of depth within that face,

without having to make big gestures.

It's so much stronger when it's minimal, really.

(Basil Iwanyk) I think when Kate first meets Alejandro,

she doesn't know what to think.

(Emily) They have this strange connection to each other,

that is not romantic, but they're drawn to each other in some way.

(Denis) There's a strange relationship that is created

in front of the camera as the movie evolves. That is important for the movie.

It's her trying to understand the world of this man.

Oh!

(Basil) Then when she discovers just how broken this man is,

and how that's manifested with the violence

he is able to instil in others, our heart is broken for him.

I just wanna know what I'm getting into.

Kate, you volunteered to get on this train

because you know you're doing nothing in Phoenix.

Yeah, you're just sweeping up a fucking mess.

-Do you wanna find the guys responsible? -Yes.

-Yes? -Yes!

This is where we start.

Matt is the classic American soldier, law enforcement CIA

who is convinced, and I'm not sure he's wrong,

that we are at war with people that are much more depraved.

Much more immoral than we are.

The only way to keep America safe is to fight that war on their terms.

(Taylor) He's not a zealot. He's not a fanatic.

He is an extremely well-trained

life-long soldier

that's elevated to an art form and he's having a blast.

Guillermo...

(Molly Smith) We all started talking about who could pull this off

and really, you know, elevate this role...

And bring something

to the ensemble with Alejandro and Kate.

Josh Brolin was a name that we all flipped for.

(Josh Brolin) I had problems with the character.

You wonder why he's in charge, because he comes off goofy.

That's part of what I didn't understand.

Because of the seriousness of the story,

I wanted there to still be a real connection.

To me it was like, look, he cares deeply.

How do we balance the fact that cosmetically, he's acting goofy

and silly and that he doesn't care

and I don't wanna write him off as an audience member, or as an actor?

(Denis) Josh, at the beginning, refused the part.

He said, "I don't see the character on the page.

We don't know nothing about him."

"Exactly! I need a strong artist

that will be able to bring life to this mysterious character.

I need someone that will bring colour,

bring humanity, bring layers to this character."

(Josh) So then, once we got here and started getting into it,

once we were around the real Delta guys, it made it easier

to kind of find a hook, for lack of a better word.

(Josh) Getting together with military people, you start asking questions.

You go out and you feed them Jack Daniels

and you do things that kind of loosen people up.

Then they start revealing things they wouldn't normally reveal.

Then you see... Ah! There's something.

How you hold your hands, or something about what you just said.

Experimenting all the time.

You feel like a scientist in a lab.

You're like, "What if I add that? What if I add that?"

(Josh) Talking to these real Delta guys, the truth is

they have to use this agency to viably commit the acts that they're committing.

So he's using these people but, at the same time,

he knows that it could save 150,000 or a million, or two million people later

in dealing with this drug problem.

What's the password?

(Denis) It was part of the screenplay in a way

that Matt would create sometime moments of laughs

that I think are suitable in the story.

When you are going in such a dark places,

you need sometime a bit of humour.

-Josh is fantastic for that. -(Josh) There's humour in it,

but I'm discovering things as I do it.

I think really what's fun is the familiarity between Alejandro and Matt.

They're total opposites.

They're in the same business, they're helping each other out.

Alejandro's totally laconic.

I can't stop talking, which makes perfect sense.

And, you know, it's that kind of opposition

-that makes it fun. -(Reggie) Are you OK?

-She's fine. -I didn't ask you.

And yet I answered.

(Emily) Josh just has a great delivery

and he's naturally just a very, very funny person.

You fall in love with Matt

and I think he is one of the main reasons why the audience,

I hope, are going to feel

more drawn to his way of doing things.

(Josh) It was, you know, a lot of us getting together

and pulling it apart and questioning it

and putting it back together.

(Emily) We are all actors who have an opinion.

We have suggestions of how to change something, or elevate a scene,

so it's been an incredibly collaborative experience.

Denis has the courage to allow you to go there

and make those kind of changes.

(Denis) At the end of the day, my job is to bring them together.

As a film-maker, it was a treat for me

to work with Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin.

They were my muses. I'm very proud of what they did.

(Indistinct)

(Drumming)

(Denis Villeneuve) For Sicario, I was saying to myself,

I don't hear music. People said, "What kind of music?"

I said, "I don't hear music. I hear a threat.

I hear a sound

that I'm feeling coming under the ground."

I said, "The closest thing I could talk about is Jaws. The music of Jaws."

(Threatening music)

I was saying, "I need a composer who will find the inspiration

to bring such a score."

(Indistinct shouting)

I discovered Jóhann Jóhannsson the composer

as I was doing my previous movie Prisoners.

At that time, I needed some specific qualities for the movie.

Jóhann blew me away.

It's really through my albums as a solo artist

that, you know, film-makers started to notice me.

I worked in theatre a lot in Iceland,

where I got the chance to write a lot of music over a period of time,

which was a great opportunity to develop my style, develop my sound.

My first album as a solo artist, called Englabörn,

is actually based on my work in theatre.

(Solo vocal over string notes)

It's a combination of classical instruments and electronics.

It has a certain melancholy, it has a certain austere quality.

One of the first things I said to him was,

"I need some music that will be a pulse coming from the desert

and that will bring the necessary tension."

There she is. The beast.

Juárez.

The drums are kind of like this relentless throbbing heartbeat

of some wild beast that's charging at you, you know.

It's the menace of these militarised vehicles

and the whole force, this militarised police.

Also the menace of the traffickers, you know,

the menace of the gangs.

So it's like two beasts in mortal combat in some way.

(Alejandro speaking Spanish)

And then the other element is the sadness and the melancholy of the border region.

And the intense melancholy of the desert as well.

So it was those things, really, that we talked about.

A lot of the music comes from the landscape.

There are so many amazing landscape shots in the film,

slow and deliberate helicopter shots.

Those images were a huge inspiration.

Denis invited me to visit the set while they were shooting,

so I spent some time there where they shot.

I was able to kind of absorb a little bit the environment

and the locations and get a feel for the mood.

It's a part of the world that I have not visited before.

It was good to get a feel for it.

The first cut that I received has no music on it,

no temp music, nothing like that.

So, in a way, I start with a blank slate

which can be a little bit terrifying.

Also exhilarating and inspiring.

I think it gives you the opportunity

to really explore new territory.

and try things you wouldn't try otherwise.

The very first scene that I worked on,

where they go for the first time into Juárez.

It's a long helicopter shot that rises above Juárez

and you see the border, you see the fence

and you see this vast sprawl in front of you.

It starts with a very faint sound of helicopter blades

which slowly rises and increases in volume.

I really wrote it around that.

And, in many ways, the helicopter blades become a part of the music in a sense.

(Whirring)

(Droning string note decreasing in pitch)

I wrote this very simple but very intense and brutal

and almost violent cue that starts out very soft,

but sort of rises and crescendos into this really brutal, distorted crescendo.

(Droning note decreasing in pitch)

I made several different ideas for that scene

and sent them to Denis and he picked the most extreme one...

(Chuckles) ..which I was very happy with.

I remember being in the editing room with Joe Walker, my editor,

and we'd received a few attempts from Jóhann.

Jóhann likes to explore in this, so he brings me different ideas.

I remember hearing those sounds

for the first time when we are above the desert and discovering Juárez.

I thought to myself, "I never heard something like that before in my life."

It's the most powerful music I ever had. I was so proud of him.

(Jóhann) I used a lot of cello. A lot of multi-track cello.

Both melodic and textual writing and this minimal kind of drone

that I create from many different sources.

Both an orchestra and pipe organ.

Various instruments are, you know, combined

to form this deep, very visceral done.

That is sort of a motif throughout some of the scenes.

(Droning string note decreasing in pitch)

(Thudding over note)

For me, the drone can be a very complex thing,

even though it's only one tone.

When it's really well done, it becomes something that's simple,

but very, very complex at the same time.

It's very much to do with the fundamental frequencies of the body

and of the world around you. It's a very important part of what I do.

I wanted a visceral effect

that affected the body and affected the audience

in a very direct way.

In Sicario, you feel it in your body.

(Denis) He's by far right now my favourite composer

because he's someone that can reinvent himself

and that has the humility

to embrace the movie for what it is and to just elevate it.

(Whirring)

(High-pitched soaring vocals)

(Taylor Sheridan) Sicario is about the machine of selling drugs

and the machine of stopping them.

Right or wrong, either way.

The Mexican drug cartels

became more powerful than local police forces in Mexico.

(Taylor) There is a vast appetite for drugs.

I began investigating the cause and the consequence.

That was really the genesis of the screenplay.

You'll be surprised how deeply the tentacles of drug trafficking

extend on both sides of the border.

You had murders every day. Brutality levels you've never seen.

(Denis Villeneuve) Very authentic.

The screenwriter, he knew exactly that world.

(Taylor) My goal was to write a film that had people watching a movie going,

"Holy shit! What's gonna happen next?"

Then, for the next week, thinking about the themes and the messages.

The idea for the screenplay

was a culmination of a number of different stories

that intrigued me, human stories.

What really sparked my interest was

in 2006, when the Mexican government did their offensive against the cartels.

Just the incredible failure of that endeavour.

President Felipe Calderón was really the first president

who boldly decide to combat the drug trafficking organisations.

And the way he decided to go about that is sending the Federal Police

and the military to border cities like Juárez.

Never had we seen something like what we saw

between 2007 and 2012,

when it was just all-out warfare.

Juárez became a combat zone for all intents and purposes.

There were mutilations.

Times where severed heads were left in public places

as warnings for their rivals.

There were literally death threats against police

that were posted on banners,

naming the police officers who would be killed.

Many people left Juárez, those who could afford it.

The wealthier people.

At one point, the Mayor of Juárez was living in El Paso.

(Mónica Ortiz Uribe) The misfortune of Juárez is that

it happens to be situated at the doorstep of

the world's most lucrative drug market.

If you're a drug trafficker looking to deliver your goods

to your customers in the United States, you've gotta get through Juárez.

And so, there are times when

one cartel will dispute the territory from another

and thus you have a big explosion of violence.

More than 10,000 murders that happened

at the height of the drug war in Ciudad Juárez...

..went unresolved.

One thing that went unnoticed is these disappearances

of young women from downtown Juárez.

These were women from the poor parts of the city

and often times, they would end up downtown

looking for work to help their families.

One night, they just wouldn't return home.

There wasn't any real investigations.

The families, the mothers were the ones who did their own investigations

to try and find out where their daughters went.

They're trying very hard not to let their loved ones become invisible

and that's how Mexico has treated them.

You know, they've erased them.

(Mónica) Some of these women were later found killed.

Their skeletal remains were found

in the outskirts of the city.

As border security has become tighter on on the US side

and it's been harder to get their product across,

Mexican drug cartels have also gone into side businesses,

like sex trafficking to try to keep their profit margin high.

One of the theories is that these women were being picked up

for sex trafficking.

Juárez is erm...

..is a lively city, is a vibrant city, is a colourful city.

It's a city that has a large industry.

A city that has artists and musicians.

When the violence hit Juárez, it hurt all those things.

We started pushing the authorities to do much better,

to do a better job because, you know,

we were hurting...with people.

It did accomplish quite a bit. People are starting to go back to Juárez.

People are starting to go shopping, seeing the doctor,

the dentist, the pharmacist.

I feel very confident

we're gonna change this beautiful, beautiful area

of so many beautiful, beautiful people.

(Taylor) It was important to me that we saw the story

through the eyes of someone, this is Benicio's character Alejandro,

that had suffered as completely as he possibly could at the hands of this war.

(Silenced gunshot)

I thought a fascinating method of commenting on the collapse

of law and order in a certain place, complete collapse.

(Trent Luckinbill) Alejandro started off in law enforcement in Mexico

and as his family is wiped out by the cartel,

becomes hell-bent on a revenge.

Becoming through that process something that he never would've imagined.

Does he have some humanity in there left?

Is there something in there that people can connect to,

you know, of what he once was?

I worked in Juárez.

-For the DEA? -No.

(Edward L McDonnell) Alejandro's intriguing and you wanna know who he is.

This drug problem impacted him on such a personal level

that he's gone to the dark side

to resolve his struggle.

And through him, we learn about the cartels and the drug trade.

Nothing will make sense to your American ears.

And you will doubt everything that we do.

But, in the end,

you will understand.

Sicario does a good job of

capturing the sense of dread, of fear

and of not knowing who you can trust.

When you go to Juárez, you right away tense up.

It's a survival technique.

There are lookouts everywhere. Cartels placed them there.

Spotter vehicle, left lane. Left lane.

(On radio) Spotter vehicle, nine o'clock.

We also are afraid of the police,

because a lot of the police have been co-opted by the cartels.

(Taylor) Silvio is a State Police Officer, his son Eliseo

who, like most young boys, idolises his father and his father loves his son...

His father's a corrupt police officer.

You have to be careful not to judge him fully,

cos we don't know him fully.

Maybe that's the only way to pay for his family.

Maybe he was forced into doing it.

Therefore, his only option is to do it, or they'll kill him and his family.

He's drinking alcohol at eight in the morning.

Is that because he's a mean drunk

or he's trying to self-medicate?

(Gunshots)

(Taylor) What are the consequences of his death for his family?

Now that source of income has gone for Eliseo and his mother.

So how is this soon-to-be-adolescent going to survive?

What's the best-paying job in northern Mexico for a 13-year-old boy?

One of my missions as a reporter covering Ciudad Juárez was

to tell the story of the people who died in this drug war.

One was a teenager, the son of a single mother,

who worked at a factory in Juárez, assembling our cell phones,

our laptop computers, making $10 a day.

She had to work two shifts, so she was not at home very often

and her son could barely afford a decent pair of sneakers.

Meanwhile, he's got some neighbours

that are driving a great car, have a beautiful home,

who are involved in the drug trade.

So he starts dealing drugs with them.

Eventually, he's witness to a murder between two rival gangs

in his neighbourhood, so he is murdered for being a witness.

That's the real evil of drugs.

Not only what they do to the body of the person who uses them,

but what they do to the body of everyone who touches it.

(Edward) We as Americans feel comfortable

because Juárez is over there and we're safe over here.

I think this movie is about

what happens when that war comes to our town, our city

and how do we deal with it?

It's affecting our neighbour Mexico so tremendously

and everyone in it.

And our answer is to build a wall.

(Mónica) The border fence was a relatively new phenomenon

between El Paso and Juárez

that came after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

(Daniel Borunda) There's border patrol agents, sensors,

use of drones and helicopters, infra-red device, night-vision.

Decades ago, I remember you could cross the border

and you would literally see people crossing on little boats.

Since 9/11, you now need a passport to cross over.

There are really long lines to get from one city to the other,

to cross the bridge, as long as two hours.

There are thousands of vehicles that cross the border on a daily basis

and among this legal, commercial traffic,

there's also underground traffic, smuggling of drugs.

It's incredible. They use it in cars.

They put a fake transmission, they use it inside tyres.

In border cities like El Paso,

drug tunnels are one of the smuggling methods

that Mexican drug cartels use.

(Indistinct shouting)

The tunnel shown in the movie kind of flashed me back

to a tunnel that they found

right close to the Bridge of the Americas.

There was actually a tunnel that was dug underneath the Rio Grande

where they were bringing in drugs, illegals.

They have electricity, they'll have ventilation systems,

they'll have ladders.

The recent escape of Mexican drug lord Joaquín "Chapo" Guzmán,

there was a small motorcycle inside that tunnel.

The drug trafficking organisations

are constantly exploring

new and different ways to smuggle the drugs across a border.

They were sending drugs on a catapult till they got caught,

but it's incredible. They're very smart.

When you're talking about so much money, you get smart.

Once those drugs are smuggled across the border,

they're stored in what's known as stash houses in El Paso.

Could be your neighbour's home. It could be a warehouse.

It could be a home where there's nobody around.

It could be a home with kids around.

Then they're repackaged, then they're smuggled further

into other cities across the United States.

(Threatening music)

(Taylor) How do you stop a $50 billion a year business?

The sophistication of criminals has magnified

to a point that they're essentially their own armies.

The amount of money that can be made from these drugs

is so staggering that you understand why they would.

So you can't apply law and order

as a means of dealing with people who don't respect it.

We've seen that time and again, in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And at some point, the war becomes a war

and we're seeing an increased militarised approach toward policing.

We've been at war for 12 years essentially.

And, as those individuals come back,

and all the lessons learned in our various wars,

they're now being applied to our police tactics.

This is an extreme version of that.

When I read the Taylor Sheridan screenplay,

I felt that the screenwriter knew the culture of the FBI,

the culture of CIA, the culture of the Delta forces.

There was something very authentic in the way he was writing the scenes.

I have a lot of family that is in law enforcement.

I have a lot of friends that are in the military.

I was able to lean on them to make sure that,

even though this is an imagined world and circumstance,

that it's accurate.

It lets us really ask the question: does the end justify the means?

Which is really the point of the film.

It was really interesting to write a character who believes

that whatever he does that protects his country

is the right thing to do, regardless of what that is.

He is the personification of the end justifies the means.

Matt believes he's doing the right thing.

That's extremely important.

How far you're willing to let your own ethics stray

is a very individual question.

Whether you're a journalist, whether you're a prosecutor,

whether you're a police officer, it's a choice between life and death.

Doing the right thing and doing the wrong thing.

To choose life sometimes is to choose the wrong thing.

(Taylor) So where do we go from here?

I don't know the answer. My job is to ask the questions.