Hollywood and the Myth of Criminal Convergence. The Case of Sicario: Day of the Soldado

Narratives of drug cartels progressively assuming control of migration routes by smuggling and trafficking migrants and Islamic terrorists across borders is not only common in academic accounts and international organizations’ reports. It is also emerging in popular culture. This article sheds light on how the myth of criminal convergence can be created and conveyed to the public through crime-action films. I look at one of the most important places for mythmaking of any kind: Hollywood. Based on a visual social semiotic analysis of the film Sicario: Day of the Soldado, this article will show how the myth of convergence is conveyed throughout it, and what its implications are. It will argue that the rhetoric of criminal convergence fuels a simplistic account of the existence of a battle between good (law enforcement) and evil (criminals working on all sorts of interconnected cross-border crimes), thereby legitimizing every action in the fight against crime.