[yasr_overall_rating]
The border between the U.S. and Mexico is a dangerous place and these dangers would not be stopped by a simple wall. Sicario, Denis Villeneuve’s new film, makes it clear that there are bad guys on all sides. If you try to live by procedure, you can only get lost in the desert.
Sicario doesn’t let down, even from the beginning. Opening with simple text that only explains the film’s title - which means “hitman” in Mexico, Villeneuve puts us in the action immediately. He defines the stakes as the audience’s surrogate, Emily Blunt’s FBI Special Weapons and Tactics Team agent Kate Macer, realizes that the simple hostage situation she has stumbled into isn’t as simple as she thought.
Following the success of the opening mission, Kate is recruited to join a special team lead by Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), who plans to stop a Mexican drug cartel by getting their main leader. Graver works with Alejandro Gillick (Benicio Del Toro), a mysterious man that Kate is instantly suspicious of. She eventually decides to go along anyway, even if it sure looks like they don’t really need her. But there is a reason she is there.
After earning a commercial breakthrough with 2013’s Prisoners, Villeneuve is back with another film that plays to his strengths. His world is a dark one, so his decision to head to the drug war at the Mexican border seems like a clear one. It’s like a playground to him, where he can keep the audience off-guard with twists aplenty. And he found the perfect audience surrogate in Blunt’s character. First-time screenwriter Taylor Sheridan and Villeneuve could have gone the easy route with clunky narration, but by giving the audience a character to see the action through, we are put right in it.
Since we’ve all seen plenty of movies where everyone betrays one another, Kate isn’t written as a naive figure. She may believe a bit too much in working in the system, but she knows that no one can be trusted. This type of character shows some faith in the audience as well, since we aren’t going to buy the idea that everyone is clean either.
Villeneuve also bettered Prisoners by figuring out how to make a shorter film without sacrificing his love of slow-burning, deliberate and thrilling filmmaking. There are several set-pieces throughout the film that will make the heart race. His handling of the team’s arrival in Juarez is expertly done, as the parade of SUVs slink into danger like a snake. The walk through the desert and the chase in the tunnels feels like Villeneuve trying to out-do the finale of Zero Dark Thirty. Sicario is a thriller that doesn’t have time for the political situation between the U.S. and Mexico. Indeed, it doesn’t even have time to care about the drugs that drive the empire the team is hoping to tear down.
Blunt gives an incredible, realistic portrayal of Kate. She pulls off this wonderful balance between pure, childlike bewilderment and grounded understanding of the mission. Her performance is in stark contrast to Benicio Del Toro, who brings swagger to Alejandro. From the first time we see him, it’s obvious that something is up, but Del Toro has an ability to make us feel at ease and convinces us to trust him. Del Toro shows off the talents we’ve seen him display countless times, but Blunt really starts a new phase of her career here, proving that she’s willing to put the work in that is needed to give such a nuanced and believable performance in a gritty movie.
And Sicario is as gritty as they come. It questions the costs of keeping us safe on the U.S. side of the border and can practically be used as the definition of the phrase “violence begets violence.” Are we prepared to accept that the only way to fight the drug war is to fight it like an actual war? Sicario shows that it's already being fought that way, whether society likes it or not.