Sicario

Released:  September 18^th, 2015

Rated:  R

Distributor:  Lionsgate

Starring:  Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, Daniel Kaluuya

Directed by:  Denis Villeneuve

Written by:  Taylor Sheridan

Personal Bias Alert:  anesthetized to violence, big Emily Blunt fan

8.2 of 10

            Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival and having already earned the most money per-screen of any film in 2015, Sicario has been riding a masterful rollout that’s united critics and audiences alike.  Boasting an impressive pedigree both in front of and behind the camera, it’s no wonder people are itching to see this drug war thriller.  Those familiar with director Denis Villeneuve’s body of work, including Prisoners and Enemy, will not be surprised by the film’s beautiful grit, but Sicario seems poised to launch the director’s signature style into the mainstream.

            With Emily Blunt’s Kate acting as the consummate audience surrogate, viewers are sucked into the bleak tale of the US government combating a ruthless Mexican drug cartel.  Kate is no novice when it comes to the drug war; she’s worked in the trenches leading a kidnap response team, but when she’s recruited to join Josh Brolin’s Matt and Benicio Del Toro’s Alejandro in a joint task force, she quickly finds herself in over her head.

            As the two men taking her down the rabbit hole, Del Toro and Brolin feel as if their parts were written for them.  Brolin does his serious goofball shtick, making Matt the unnerving kind of man who will crack jokes as he’s kicking your butt, while Del Toro is more traditionally mysterious; a man of quiet, reserved fury.  Brolin fades into the background as the film wears on, leaving Del Toro and Blunt to battle it out in an undefined game of cat and mouse.  Neither of them trust each other and their reasons for not turning their back on the pairing is what forms the film’s most hard-hitting arc.  The pair worked together previously on 2010’s Wolfman, and they nail the relationship’s uneasy camaraderie.  However, it’s Blunt’s character alone who comes to embody the message of the film.  How Kate handles the horrific things being thrown at her is emblematic of American society as a whole, her final scenes forming a scathing indictment of how Americans handle a war that’s so close to our border.

            As an emblem, Blunt’s character works, but the weight of that metaphor flattens her into a sketch of an actual person.  All the characters suffer from being representations of ideas, which first-time writer Taylor Sheridan never finds a way around.  This would be forgivable if the observations Sicario comes up with were more unique, but the brutal messiness of the drug war should be no secret to anyone.  As the film wraps up, these familiar ideas and thin characters become more apparent, and the final scene hinges on a note that rang false.  The setup for this moment is there on paper, but watching it play out didn’t seem true to character and serves as the largest hint of the film’s near-miss at combining large ideas with a blistering plot.

            Even with this minor letdown, Sicario remains one of the top films of the year thanks to its expert execution of the slow burn.  This is a graphically violent film, but its action is decidedly not packed.  Each set piece milks the audience’s expectations, hinting at the horrors to come until you find yourself begging for the violent release.  It’s astounding work by Sheridan and Villeneuve, backed up by an expertly pushy score by Jóhann Jóhannsson and gorgeously emblematic cinematography by Roger Deakins. 

             You would be hard-pressed to find a better made thriller than Sicario, but its morality tale is ultimately too cumbersome to pull off, leaving it as a frustratingly near-perfect film.

Other Notes:

Ø  This film suffers from the ‘I know this character will be important because I recognize the actor’ syndrome.

Ø  This comes down to personal taste, but I found the visual style to be a tad distracting.

Ø  A thesis could be written on the displays of physical dominance in this film.

Ø  I swear that Josh Brolin’s characters in both this and Everest both talk about loving Texas.