After seeing Sicario, I had a few questions running through my head: Is it really that bad in Juarez? Should Emily Blunt play Captain Marvel? When did Benicio Del Toro transform into Mexican Brad Pitt? How can we live in a world where Roger Deakins hasn’t won an Academy Award for Cinematography? And most importantly, has anyone seen my jaw?
When a raid takes a horrifying turn, Kate Macer (Blunt) – an idealistic FBI agent, who specializes in responding to kidnappings – begins to feel the futility of her mission. That’s until a DOD adviser named Matt (Josh Brolin) offers her a chance to, in his words, “dramatically overreact” and take a shot at the men she’s truly looking for. Together with a shady prosecutor from Columbia named Alejandro (del Toro), they travel to Juarez to extract the cousin of a powerful drug kingpin.
If this sounds like a movie you’ve seen before, trust me, it isn’t.
In Sicario, Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Enemy) establishes himself as one of this generation’s true talents with some of the most intense and exhilarating moments in recent memory, and it’s not even close. Juarez is a living, breathing, personification of violence — a portrait of a city that has descended into chaos, masterfully depicted with haunting realism. One particular scene involves an ambush on the convoy of our (and I use this term very loosely) heroes while they’re bottlenecked in traffic. As the drug-fueled, face-tattooed gangbangers wait for the perfect moment to strike, Matt’s men calmly step out of their trucks and slaughter the would-be assailants where they sat. Nobody saw that coming.
Though perhaps the name on the marquee should be the man behind the camera, the DiCaprio of cinematographers himself, Roger Deakins who can now add “best use of thermal and/or night vision ever seen in a movie” to his already-impressive resume. The guy is a magician. We’ve already had one vision of a violent, depraved wasteland in John Seale’s ultra-saturated cinematography in Mad Max: Fury Road. Deakins gives us another, and I’m pretty sure I liked his better.
Rookie screenwriter Taylor Sheridan pens the script — a smart, winding plot matched with occasionally clunky, yet overall sharp dialogue (a couple of which are pants-soiling one-liners that will live on as bumper stickers and frat boy neck tattoos until the end of time). The film is also a study in morality, exploring the age-old notion of the end justifying the means, which is arguably where the film’s true conflict lies. This is exemplified by the contrasting moral standpoints of each of the superb main characters:
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On one end is Blunt’s idealistic Kate, whose most notable quality is her commitment to an unyielding moral code, one bordering on naivete. Time and time again, she is forced to reevaluate the boundaries of what she deems right or wrong. And she pays for it – beaten, berated, and battered, physically and emotionally, this isn’t the gun-toting nikita from Edge of Tomorrow you may have been expecting.
In the middle is Matt who resides in the proverbial gray area; a cynical representation of the powers that be who will deliver his country’s best interests by any means necessary. Having said that, Brolin injects an easiness to the film with his wisecracks and flip-flops, less government honcho and more of a surfing instructor.
Finally, there’s del Toro’s Alejandro – don’t let that sleepy mug fool you. It’s only there to mask a man who seethes anger and breathes vengeance. Undoubtedly the star of the show, Alejandro is a mean motherfucker who shoved his moral compass down some lowlife’s throat years ago, effectively supplanting Liam Neeson as the bedtime story gangsters scare their kids with.
All in all, with its stellar performances and gripping action, Sicario can be described quite simply as a spectacle, proving to be one of the best films of the year. And that’s no dramatic overreaction.
