DRUG LORD: THE LEGEND OF SHORTY
Gravitas Ventures
Reviewed for Shockya by Harvey Karten. Data-based on Rotten Tomatoes.
Grade: B+
Director: Angus MacQueen
Screenwriter: Angus MacQueen
Cast: El Chapo, Chino, Angus MacQueen
Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 11/3/14
Opens: November 14, 2014
If you heard that the authorities captured Public Enemy Number One, responsible for a large number of 80,000 people murdered during the last ten years or so and the poisoning by drugs of millions around the world, what sentence would you give him? Would capital punishment be too good for him? How about having him drawn and quartered? Surprisingly when the Mexican authorities first captured Joaquín Guzmán Loera (El Chapo) in 1993, the judge gave him a sentence of twenty years. That appears to be the maximum one can get not only in Mexico but in a good part of Latin America. Had he been given the death penalty, he would not likely have escaped in 2001 by bribing someone in the prison system, then proceeded to carry out a rampage of killings, principally of people competing with him for turf in Mexico. This sentencing fact is surprisingly not mentioned in Angus MacQueen’s documentary, “Drug Lord: The Legend of Shorty,” but that’s not important to him. What is significant to MacQueen is his thesis that everyone, it seems, knew where Guzmán was hiding out—virtually in plain sight. (Osama Bin Laden, anyone?) But for reasons known to the governments of Mexico and the U.S., he was not touched despite an award of five million dollars here in the States for information leading to his arrest. In fact so easy would it appear to locate not only him but his chief accomplices—folks who arranged heroin, cocaine and weed and packed it for shipment mostly north of the border but to areas as far away as Australia—that the filmmaker is able to interview the bad guys albeit with their faces fogged out. MacQueen was even invited to interview Guzmán himself, though El Chapo became lunch-shy twice, leaving MacQueen to interview the lesser drug kingpins. At any rate, the writer-director enjoyed a free flight on a small propeller plane piloted by a fellow called “El Chino.”
MacQueen gets to interview even El Chapo’s mother at just one her son’s residences. She defends the lad, “a good man,” one who gets “blamed for everything by everybody,” an understandable commentary for a guy that not only a mother can love but so can lots of people in the vicinity to Culiacán on Mexico’s Pacific Coast, the home of the drug kingpin. Mafia hotshot John Gotti’s mother likewise had called her son “just a plumber.” Everyone interviewed praises this “loved” criminal, a veritable Robin Hood, who, when someone in town needs medical attention is given a free flight to the best hospital in the city.
MacQueen has a good sense of humor, spending considerable time giving us a listen to some goofy mariachi songs about Guzmán. There again, he is considered a hero. Even when we see Guzmán’s face, we can scarcely believe that he’s even wanted by the authorities. Mostly clean shaven, El Chapo has a round, even baby-face, a nice-looking person who doesn’t look like some pock-marked, vicious looking criminal that you would not want to meet in a dark alley. The graphic imagery, however, shows a dozen or more blood bodies on the ground, victims of the mass murder of those who got in El Chapo’s way—including a number of men dangling from a rope.
When he is finally captured, one must wonder that his seizure was just a coincidence coming three weeks before “Drug Lord” premiered at the SXSW festival. One may conjecture that the police and the army took the right action before they would be more highly criticized once the world could see the mayhem that these drug lords have brought about.
Unrated 90 minutes. © Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online
Story – B
Acting – B+
Technical – A-
Overall – B+
