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.

Enemy

Released:  February 6^th, 2014

Rated:  R

Distributor:  A24

Starring:  Jake Gyllenhaal, Mélanie Laurent, Sarah Gadon, Isabella Rossellini

Directed by:  Denis Villeneuve

Written by:  Javier Gullón

Personal Bias Alert:  expected it to be difficult to understand, doesn’t like spiders

3.8 of 10

            The problem with mysteries like the one Enemy plays with is that you have to drop the right amount of bread crumbs as you tell the story.  If you leave too much, you give the answer away, but if you leave too few, the ending won’t make sense.  To complicate matters more, everyone’s ‘right amount’ will be different depending on their knowledge of things like cultural references and genre conventions.  I know this isn’t a new observation to anyone, and you might be rolling your eyes at me thinking that I’m about to go on some long-winded explanation of a very basic concept.  Well, that eye-rolling state is exactly what I was in while watching Enemy, because it left far too many bread crumbs as it told its story.

            A brief explanation of the plot is best as the film does try to be mysterious about its narrative.  Suffice it to say that Jake Gyllenhaal plays two men who look exactly alike, and the reason for this is the enigma the film ponderously unravels.  You never get a ‘Hallelujah, the explanation is this’ moment.  Instead, it wants you to think about its intentions, its meanings, and its odd spider metaphor.  Seriously, spiders real and imagined pop up several times in this film, and it’s as heavy-handed and simplistic a metaphor as most everything in this movie.

            Writer Javier Gullón really put all his eggs into the mystery basket with this script, choosing not to expand on characters or themes beyond what was absolutely necessary.  The film expects you to be incredibly interested in figuring out who the two men are in relation to each other, apparently not realizing that some of us would figure out the basics of what’s happening pretty early on and not care too much about the details.  That’s the boat I was in, even pinpointing what I still think was the major theme of the film in the first 30 or so minutes, being left to slog through the next hour plus without getting much for it.  Frankly, a character finding their double isn’t unique; the 2013 film The Double (in which the character aptly finds his double) is based on a novella of the same name by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, which also happens to be the name of the José Saramago novel this film is based on.  What that other film and I’m guessing the two novelists understood was that this setup isn’t enough on its own to be interesting, and more must be done with it.  Enemy doesn’t share this insight, so it does little besides set up the scenario and watch it playout.

            The fault of the mystery being so obvious lies with director Denis Villeneuve, as much of the tipoffs about what’s really going on stems from how the material was presented.  There’s a sort of double warning at the beginning of the film that the material may be difficult to discern:  first we get a title card talking about there being order in chaos, then we get a heightened, almost dreamlike opening sequence that’s wordless but chock full of metaphors that slap you in the face with the message ‘you don’t understand what I mean yet, but I’m important!’  Either one by itself would get a thinking man’s moviegoer alert and watchful.  Together, they just get your head churning on overdrive.  Villeneuve proceeds to shoot the first half using such carefully constructed shots that it’s hard to miss what he’s hinting at.  Perhaps if he hadn’t gotten the audience so engaged or if he had hidden his meanings better then the film could’ve been more enigmatic.  As is, it’s just obvious.

            At least if you become unengaged you can sit back and watch Jake Gyllenhaal craft two distinctly different characters.  Costumes do help distinguish them, but their gate is what really sets them apart:  one a bit plodding and hunched while the other moves with purpose and confidence.  It’s not anything too big, which makes the time spent examining it rewarding.

            If you don’t come up with a plausible narrative explanation quickly, then this film might maintain your interest purely to figure out what the hell is going on.  Many people seem to be fascinated by this, but others, like myself, sniff out a shallow meaning underneath all the weirdness, which makes it wholly uninteresting.

Other Notes:

Ø  I enjoyed the waxing and waning presence of the score.

Ø  Random Isabella Rossellini!

Ø  I watched Chris Stuckmann’s explanation of the movie thinking I might’ve missed something.  Unfortunately, all it revealed to me was a better explanation of the spider metaphor, which didn’t get too far away from my own and certainly didn’t add anything to my appreciation of the film.  Here’s the link to Chris’s breakdown:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9AWkqRwd1I