The documentary “Cartel Land” opens with chilling night scenes of large-scale methamphetamine cooking in rural Mexico.
What viewers later learn is how such drug production became deeply intertwined with the emerging vigilante movement.
Led by farmers, orchard owners and small-town doctors, the movement has captured the imagination of Mexicans fed up with drug violence and inept governance.
New York-based director Matthew Heineman described the experience as never knowing who he was with, the good or the bad guys.
The localization of justice simply but inexorably blurred this distinction.
His unprecedented access to the vigilante groups of Michoacan gave him a greater insight into this yearning question.
Heineman said of his film, “the central question I’m trying to answer in this film is whether it’s just for citizens to take the law into their own hands.”
