This film is way too smart for such a dumb audience *ANSWERS WITHIN*
* Torture Scene
Alejandro raped the dude, this is obvious if one pays attention. There was no waterboarding, the water jug
isn't being used at all. The crotch-in-his-face action and rythmic grunts later confirm this.
They probably killed him afterward too.
* Alejandro is not working for the Colombian cartel (lol where do you people come up with this stuff).
It's pretty clear he's a SAD/SOG operator. He's being called a 'Ghost' early in the film, later the DELTA
team call the op as 'clearing, placing an agent'. His skills also make this more than obvious, no cartel
assassin has these sort of skills. And no DELTA/SAD operation would place this amount of trust (without any
monitoring) on some unknown factor that works as a hitman for a cartel. It's pretty clear Alejandro is part
of the team and everyone trusts him. SOG operators take part in deniable black ops, in fact this is their modus operandi,
the CIA doesn't need to hire someone from the cartels to do their dirty work, they have their own teams for that.
Finally, the way he carries himself screams 'tier-1 stone cold killer'.
They recruited him sometime after the death of his family and trained him up. He may have been doing his own
assassinations before that happened, but it's clear he's firmly attached to SAD now.
* The Kate character is dumb, which is why Matt chooses her. "I like her already" is a sort of sarcastic joke on his part.
He likes her cause she seems like a dumb grunt to him. He doesn't want the lawyer cause "he's a smart kid".
She's being groomed as a patsy from the very beginning. As if this wasn't obvious, pretty much *every action* of hers in the film confirms that she's not the sharpest pencil in the box. Reggie tells her that Matt is a SAD guy (smart dude) and she tells him "No, he's a DOD advisor". "Do you really believe that?" She's stupid. Later in the motel, when Matt finally admits they're CIA, Reggie anticipates what he's saying (cause he already knows it) but Kate loses it cause she still thought this was something else. She's so *beep* stupid she didn't put 2 and 2 together. DELTA, private jets, "conspiracy to sink Fiji" and so on. All of these red alerts flew over her head.
Later on, she thinks Alejandro works for the Colombians (lmao). It still hasn't dawned on her that this is a deniable black op leading to a targeted assassination. Also note how the DELTA leader says to Matt that he likes 'overseas engagements' more cause he doesn't like to babysit. DELTA and SAD work together in these sort of ops all the time.
* Matt is very sharp and Brolin does a great job portraying that indirectly. Notice how he manipulates Kate by always feeding her half-truths so that she nevers gets to see the entire picture, only the next step. Notice how DEA, DELTA (and Alejandro) act towards him. He's definitely in-charge there but in more ways than a simplistic military hierarchy. They respect him. He's the kind of person that would lead a SAD team.
* Dinner scene
The reason Alejandro asks if the kids speak english and then says we'll speak in english is not (as some idiots posted)
cause the director didn't want spanish dialogue (due to audiences not liking subtitles). He went against the norm in so many
different ways (and there was enough spanish dialogue in the film to begin with) that this wouldn't have made a difference.
No. The reason they do the scene in english is so that the thinking person in the audience can get another glimpse at the Alejandro character. You see, by having this exchange, he's conditioning the drug lord to think that his kids will be spared.
There is no doubt in Alejandro's mind that he'll kill the kids and the wife. He knows it the minute he sees them all together.
*beep* he's planned this for years, probably fantasized about it thousands of times.
But his calculating mind finds a way to extract the most out of his prey in terms of emotional impact, before he dispatches him. When the wife&kids execution takes place, you can see the drug lord is paralyzed by the shock, he can't even speak.
Alejandro tells him to finish his meal and absorbs that emotional despair, then executes him too.
This is the sort of brutality and ruthlessness that the director puts on exhibit here. But of course, it's only there for those who have the thinking capacity to discern it. The rest talk about subtitles.
* Final scene
When Alejandro says "you would be committing suicide Kate" he doesn't just imply that he'll kill her, but that her death will look like a suicide to whomever discovers her. Note how he's handling *her* gun with a gloved hand. Since he has her sign a formal paper, this is the final nail in the coffin of "Alejandro works for the cartel theory". Why would a cartel assassin care about any of that? Alejandro is part of of the SAD black ops team that Matt leads. The final scene makes it crystal clear that these people are truly shadow agents, with no moral hangups and def not to be messed with. Matt also says to Kate "that would be a major mistake", again implying death.
I found the movie very entertaining because it doesn't just spoon feed the audience with the facts. Instead it plays with doubt and lets us figure it all out.
Most of the posters in these boards act like dumb Kate, lapping up everything Matt feeds them without engaging critical thinking. I view this as another success for this film, exposing its audience as dumb hicks looking for easy answers that fall conveniently in pre-formed molds.