Narcos: Mexico
It would have been easy to think this was simply squeezing too much out of a formula that had already worked very well. After three seasons of kingpins, chases, politics, corruption, violence, voice-over and criminal rises, the risk of repetition was enormous. And yet this continuation manages to justify its existence quite well. Not because it discovers a completely new world, but because it shifts the focus and shows that the history of drug trafficking was not a closed line, but a chain of relays, pacts, betrayals and opportunities. The setting changes, the names change, the texture changes, but the disease remains the same.
What interests me most is that the origin has special weight here. The series does not begin with a fully formed machine, but with the feeling of watching something organize itself, professionalize itself, stop being a collection of plazas and local bosses and become a much more ambitious structure. Félix Gallardo works precisely because of that: he is not a Mexican Escobar and does not try to be. Diego Luna plays him in a more restrained, colder, less volcanic way. His danger lies not so much in immediate explosion as in the ability to calculate, negotiate, observe and understand before others that true power is not only about giving orders, but about connecting interests.
The first season holds together very well through the clash between that construction of an empire and the figure of Kiki Camarena. Michael Peña brings a necessary humanity, because his character introduces a more direct, more moral, more vulnerable point of view. The series works best when it does not reduce the conflict to cops versus traffickers, but shows how every step toward justice crashes against an enormous network of complicities. Politicians, police officers, businessmen, soldiers, intermediaries, families and governments mix until the border between legality and crime begins to seem almost decorative. That is what is most disturbing: it is not only that there are criminals, but that too many institutions learn to live with them.
I also like that it is a drier and, at times, more elegant series than the previous one. It has less immediate fever, less of a central monster devouring everything, but gains in patience and atmosphere. The landscapes, houses, roads, offices and deserts seem to belong to the same network of threat. Violence may appear suddenly, but very often the unsettling part comes before, in the waiting, in a conversation, in a phone call, in someone who knows too much and does not yet know that he is already lost. That tone suits it well, although it also makes some parts denser and less easily addictive.
Across its three seasons, you can feel the tension between repeating success and telling something with its own identity. There are moments when the mechanism is too recognizable: rise, betrayal, fall, voice-over, historical data, characters entering to occupy a place on the board. But when the series finds its own pulse, it works extremely well. The second season seems especially solid to me in the way it shows power decomposing from within. And the third, although it changes quite a lot and becomes more choral, confirms that bitter idea: every time one stage seems to close, another form of the business appears, more scattered, more violent or harder to control.
The problem is that it does not always avoid the feeling of watching a variation on something already known. It does not have the surprise factor of the original series or a presence as magnetic as Wagner Moura's. At times you miss a figure capable of dragging everything along with that hypnotic force. There are also characters and storylines that could have had more room, and the ambition to cover so many names, territories and political balances creates some unevenness. But even when it becomes irregular, it maintains a very high technical level and a remarkable ability to turn recent history into a somber, complex and very entertaining thriller.
In the end, it seems to me a very worthy expansion, considerably better than one might expect if it is seen only as an attempt to keep exploiting the same vein. For me, it does not reach the overall force of the previous three seasons, but it does add an important piece to the mosaic: the idea that modern drug trafficking is not born from one criminal genius, but from a combination of ambition, weak State, corruption, money, geography and international demand. It is repetitive sometimes, yes, but because the horror it portrays is repetitive too. The kingpins change, the routes change, the speeches change. What does not change is the machine. And that makes it a hard, elegant, addictive and very bitter series.
What interests me most is that the origin has special weight here. The series does not begin with a fully formed machine, but with the feeling of watching something organize itself, professionalize itself, stop being a collection of plazas and local bosses and become a much more ambitious structure. Félix Gallardo works precisely because of that: he is not a Mexican Escobar and does not try to be. Diego Luna plays him in a more restrained, colder, less volcanic way. His danger lies not so much in immediate explosion as in the ability to calculate, negotiate, observe and understand before others that true power is not only about giving orders, but about connecting interests.
The first season holds together very well through the clash between that construction of an empire and the figure of Kiki Camarena. Michael Peña brings a necessary humanity, because his character introduces a more direct, more moral, more vulnerable point of view. The series works best when it does not reduce the conflict to cops versus traffickers, but shows how every step toward justice crashes against an enormous network of complicities. Politicians, police officers, businessmen, soldiers, intermediaries, families and governments mix until the border between legality and crime begins to seem almost decorative. That is what is most disturbing: it is not only that there are criminals, but that too many institutions learn to live with them.
I also like that it is a drier and, at times, more elegant series than the previous one. It has less immediate fever, less of a central monster devouring everything, but gains in patience and atmosphere. The landscapes, houses, roads, offices and deserts seem to belong to the same network of threat. Violence may appear suddenly, but very often the unsettling part comes before, in the waiting, in a conversation, in a phone call, in someone who knows too much and does not yet know that he is already lost. That tone suits it well, although it also makes some parts denser and less easily addictive.
Across its three seasons, you can feel the tension between repeating success and telling something with its own identity. There are moments when the mechanism is too recognizable: rise, betrayal, fall, voice-over, historical data, characters entering to occupy a place on the board. But when the series finds its own pulse, it works extremely well. The second season seems especially solid to me in the way it shows power decomposing from within. And the third, although it changes quite a lot and becomes more choral, confirms that bitter idea: every time one stage seems to close, another form of the business appears, more scattered, more violent or harder to control.
The problem is that it does not always avoid the feeling of watching a variation on something already known. It does not have the surprise factor of the original series or a presence as magnetic as Wagner Moura's. At times you miss a figure capable of dragging everything along with that hypnotic force. There are also characters and storylines that could have had more room, and the ambition to cover so many names, territories and political balances creates some unevenness. But even when it becomes irregular, it maintains a very high technical level and a remarkable ability to turn recent history into a somber, complex and very entertaining thriller.
In the end, it seems to me a very worthy expansion, considerably better than one might expect if it is seen only as an attempt to keep exploiting the same vein. For me, it does not reach the overall force of the previous three seasons, but it does add an important piece to the mosaic: the idea that modern drug trafficking is not born from one criminal genius, but from a combination of ambition, weak State, corruption, money, geography and international demand. It is repetitive sometimes, yes, but because the horror it portrays is repetitive too. The kingpins change, the routes change, the speeches change. What does not change is the machine. And that makes it a hard, elegant, addictive and very bitter series.
Mini Review: It would have been easy to think this was simply squeezing too much out of a formula that had already worked very well. After three seasons of kingpins, chases, politics, corruption, violence, voice-over and criminal rises, the risk of repetition was enormous. And yet this continuation manages to justify its existence quite well. Not because it discovers a completely new world, but because it shifts the focus and shows that the history of drug...
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