Art Imitating Life (Finally)

30 Mar Art Imitating Life (Finally)

I happened across this clip from the movie Sicario this morning in between calls and though I watched the movie a few months ago and had seen this particular snippet before, it struck me as a good training point.

Here’s the clip:

Training Point #1: Situational Awareness

Maintaining situational awareness is critical in any scenario you may find yourself in. Now it would be simple fantasy to assume that you are going to find yourself involved in a PSD detail that has questionable extra-legal issues but we can pull good information and take aways from this particular scenario.

While the actors in this clip are primed for action based on their operational environment, we can be prepared and vigilant in every day life just the same. Now I am not suggesting that you become hyper-vigilant… I’m suggesting that you put down the iPhone for a bit and pay attention to your surroundings. Simply spending a few extra seconds scanning and assessing potential threat zones will pay dividends. You might see something that you would have missed with a casual glance or over-trained, robotic, doing it because someone said to do it but not really seeing anything look.

In other words… pay a bit more attention to subtleties.

Training Point #2: Communication is Key 

Everyone acts differently under stress. Simply put most folks fall in to one of two categories… they either get calmer or they suddenly lose their ability to form a coherent sentence. Generally speaking (sorry… had to), if you take a second to breathe and form an intelligent thought before opening your mouth to speak, communication will become far more effective.

On the topic of breathing: EVERYTHING works better when O2 is introduced in to the body. Short of the short is… Breathing. Do it. Trust me.

Here’s how: When a stressor introduces a body alarm response it can literally take your breath away. Forcing yourself to exhale and expel the built up CO2 that is in your respiratory system will literally breathe life into your body and allow all other critical functions to work at optimal level.

If you can’t breathe, you can’t communicate. If you can’t communicate, you will die.

Training Point #3: Control and Technique

Obviously the actors in this clip did a metric shit-ton of training to act the way they did while engaging targets. Not becoming focused on a singular threat and addressing targets in the order of threat priority guarantees the positive outcome for the good guys.

Some things I saw:

• Target transitions were on point. Once positive effective rounds were observed the shooters moved on to the next problem.
• Rate of Fire discipline. While we can assume that the good guys’ hardware included select fire weapons system but controlled, semi-automatic bursts were utilized to engage threats.
• Communication and ex-filtration. Once the job was done it was communicated among the team members and then they got out of dodge. No need to hang around and high five.

So what do you think of this clip? Let us know in the comment box below and let’s hear your opinion!