Series Review: "The Last Narc" (2020).

"You can't kill the truth" in The Last Narc. This documentary series directed by Tiller Russell. In 1985, American DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by Mexico’s notorious drug lords. Thirty-five years later, three former cartel insiders share unprecedented details. This is the story of Camarena, the drug cartel he infiltrated, and the narc who risked everything to discover the truth.

In early February 1985, American intelligence officer for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Enrique "Kiki" Camarena Salazar, was kidnapped by drug traffickers in Guadalajara, Mexico. He was interrogated under torture until he was murdered on February 9. Three leaders of the Guadalajara drug cartel were eventually convicted in Mexico for Camarena's murder. The U.S. investigation into Camarena's murder led to three more trials in Los Angeles for other Mexican nationals involved in the crime. The case continues to trouble U.S.-Mexican relations, most recently when one of the three convicted traffickers, Rafael Caro Quintero, was released from Mexican prison in 2013. Russell, researched Camarena's murder for fourteen years, and then shot and edited the series for two years. Russell has kept his location a secret, fearing for his safety. He said that after he asked Jorge Godoy one interview question, Godoy drew a pistol.

The unsolved 1985 kidnapping, torture and murder of thirty-seven-year-old American DEA agent Camarena generated a tidal wave of tabloid garbage; this documentary by Russell surfs atop it, exploiting the crime no less but giving it an art-film respectability. Even if this crime is truly solved someday, the series will remain relevant because of how it processes the psychological experience of death, grief and uncertainty. Where Russell and company get extremely strong footage is when they let the interviewees dive into their own backstories. Some of them are actually close to the events of the murder. Russell's film is difficult and challenging, but it is not lazy. And in a world where these kinds of stories so often are the source of hysterical sensationalism, a degree of thoughtfulness and introspection is long overdue. The construction of the story, thus raised, continues having more and more intrigue. Not only to know who will personify the real characters, but to try to clarify what really happened in early February 1985. Over an expertly paced and constructed three hours, we come to be more fascinated by these strangers than by their shared obsession: the dead American DEA agent who, for whatever reason, has triggered their on-camera confessions. The factual combines with the first steps towards fictionalisation to create something new, and something arguably all the more powerful than a feature about Camarena made in either mode. By setting aside an objective notion of the truth, Russell's work is simultaneously more fantastical and closer to the truth than anything made with traditional documentary techniques. The strangest, most unnerving and, indeed, thoughtful approach to the case is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video. That's the series, which is neither ghoulish nor exploitive.

Simon says The Last Narc receives: