Sicario

Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario is a stylish, engaging, but ultimately unremarkable look at the futility of the war on drugs, set on both sides of the US-Mexico border. The film stars Emily Blunt as a young but experienced FBI SWAT-team leader enlisted into a shady government operation tasked with bringing down a drug lord. Blunt’s nuanced performance grounds the movie. We discover a dark and confusing world through her eyes as she palpably conveys the character’s uncertainty, frustration, anger, and fear through her reactions and the ways she physically conducts herself.  The deeper Blunt and her stalwart partner (Daniel Kaluuya) descend into the moral ambiguities of the “black op” mission they find themselves attached to, the more hopeless and nihilistic things seem—both for the characters and the audience. This is an edge of your seat movie with enough disturbing imagery to excite and upset. None of the violence feels gratuitous, but it often seems like the entire point of the picture is to either shock-and-awe viewers into action or to numb audiences into accepting the inevitability of unchecked brutality in the name of stability. The movie’s inability to reconcile these conflicting objectives keeps Sicario from succeeding beyond an undeniably stylish and thought provoking thrill ride.

The stellar cast includes Josh Brolin as Blunt’s cheerily sinister supervisor, and Benicio del Toro as an ice-cold Columbian operative.  The screenplay by Taylor Sheridan is clearly and efficiently conceived and constructed—from the dramatically shocking opening sequence to some terrific unexpected narrative turns in the later part of the second act. The cinematography by the peerless Roger Deakins makes the barren desert landscapes seem like an alien planet, and the score by Jóhann Jóhannsson enhances the picture’s nightmarish fever dream quality.  Indeed all the elements seem to be in place for an emotionally and politically charged thriller as powerful as Villeneuve’s Prisoners (2013). Yet Sicario lacks that picture’s simple but individual narrative hook. It feels derivative rather than distinctive. Brolin’s presence can’t help but recall the Coen Brother’s No Country For Old Men (2007), and del Toro’s inevitably brings to mind Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic (2000). Indeed so many recent movies and acclaimed TV shows explore the fruitless drug war from so many different angles that finding something new to say seems close to impossible. Villeneuve and his talented cast and collaborators create an impressive film that unfortunately fails to leave a lasting impression.