The late Mexican noir División Narcóticos (US: Narcotics Division) is not a great film but it’s somehow both dark and quirky, occasionally cartoonish, and highly entertaining. Featuring some surprisingly explicit depictions of heroin addiction, the film stars Julio Aldama as narcotics agent Raúl, who, along with his associate Ana (Olivia Michel), goes undercover to infiltrate a drug smuggling syndicate that operates out of a nightclub. While Raúl secures a gig as trumpeter in the band, the vivacious Ana roleplays a heroin user in need of a fix; when her cover unravels, Ana’s kidnapped by ringleader Rodolfo (Germán Robles), and whisked away to some kind of cavernous fortress, the backdrop for a final, dramatic battle of bullets between the drug gang and the police. The story moves quickly, and the oddities keep piling up. There’s a little cigarette girl (Margo Su) armed with a pistol and a killer evil eye, and the drug processing laboratory (which accommodates the film’s most shocking moment) seems right out of a 50’s sci-fi movie. The sleaze factor is slathered on generously, softened only by the dreamy nightclub aesthetic with its perimeter of bamboo rods and geometric shapes hung like kooky art, hungry shadows and light engulfing characters as they pass between rooms or down to the garage. Jorge Pérez’s percussive score can be grating on occasion, its suspense-driven crescendos at times out of place, but any liabilities in craftsmanship are absolved by pure entertainment value.