Review of Sicario (2015) by Axgrinder — 09 Oct 2015

Sicario is a powerful movie, an important movie. It’s the best movie I’ve seen so far this year. The casting is perfect. Benicio Del Toro is superb. His performance is easily worthy of an Oscar nomination. Josh Brolin and Emily Blunt are also extremely good. As a hardened movie watcher, this is my kind of movie.

The movie maintains a consistently high level of dramatic tension. It also has the necessary level of believability and realism. While the level of violence is very high, it’s not what I would consider gratuitous. Sicario isn’t as dark as No country for Old Men, but if you tend to hide your face at such movies, then Sicario probably isn’t for you.

Emily Blunt plays a by-the-book FBI agent who volunteers for an assignment being run by James Brolin, purportedly under the auspices of the Department of Defense, to disrupt the Mexican drug cartels. The ruthlessness of these drug lords is unquestioned, a point evidenced through scenes of mutilated bodies hung from ropes beneath city bridges in Juarez, Mexico, and further driven home when Del Torro suggests to Blunt that the victims probably didn’t even do anything wrong, the drug lords simply want people to know that this is what happens to you if you do something they don’t like. Juarez, which is just across the border from El Paso, is one of the deadliest cities in the world.

The story is a twist on a couple of old tropes. In Sicario (and maybe in real life), America and Mexico are losing the battle against the drug cartels. Brolin has been authorized to do whatever it takes to turn the tide. Benicio Del Toro, whose background is even murkier than Brolin’s, has been enlisted to help. Blunt is recruited to join the team for reasons that aren’t revealed to her. She’s neither a new agent, nor a jaded veteran. She’s been exposed to some hard core violence and death, and she’s performed well, but she’s not a fully seasoned veteran.

After joining Brolin’s team, it quickly becomes clear that Blunt is in way over her head. In addition, she strongly objects to the methodology employed by Brolin as being both illegal and immoral. (If your enemy is helpless and you kill him, are you any better than your enemy?).

The film maker wants you to agonize over is whether Blunt is right or wrong in her convictions. As if to further inflame the tension, the movie pits masculine against feminine. Blunt is the only female in the group. The movie taunts you with a female lead character that may not be as smart or as wise as you would like her to be. But this is red herring, meant to test you’re feminist sensitivities. As an actor, I like Blunt a lot, and to her credit, she takes the role that she is given and she plays it great. But, in the end, Del Torro dominates. In the not-soon-to-be-forgotten closing scene, Benicio tells Blunt to, ‘go home, you’ll never survive here. This is the land of wolves and you’re no wolf.’.

When Oscar time rolls around, you’re going to hear a lot of people say, “I never heard of that film, what’s it about?” Don’t be like that. Go see this film.