Review of Sicario (2015) by Jhep — 10 Nov 2015

Sicario…..ultimately falls between two stools ….and succumbs Big Time to the lure of a certain cinematic grandstanding in which off-the-charts “machismo” - the film is marinated in it- totally wins the day and we enter a magical 007/Charles Bronson/Spaghetti Western Universe (think Clint Eastwood‘s The-Man-With-No-Name) where Adult Supervision has been left far behind (poor Emily Blunt gets saddled with the Adult Supervision stuff)……In a sense all this is really too bad because director Denis Villeneuve is an amazingly gifted film maker who can build suspense out of almost nothing and from having someone sneeze or make a cup of coffee using the wrong spoon....his use of music is truly phenomenal…..But sadly what held so much promise rapidly moves from art to something like Goofy Hyper-caffeinated Journalism……..We enter A MAN’S WORLD here folks where poor, bumbling Emily Blunt will be given no quarter because quite frankly, and there’s no nice way of saying this, she’s just a Dumb Girl ….

The final .007 half hour of the film disintegrates into something out of a “Twilight Zone” episode mixed with flashes from old “Zorro” movies, with Benicio del Toro shooting Bad Guys like they props in some extremely violent (some would say nifty) video game and even shooting the luckless Emily Blunt character at one point (“Don’t ever point a gun at me” he rebukes her caddishly after firing a couple of bullets into her)..…Do you get the picture ?….….clearly both script writer Taylor Sheridan and director Denis Villeneuve have opted to throw caution to the winds by this point....and the disquieting result is that the Benicio del Toro character is suddenly channeling for- that's right - good old Charles Bronson (and I`m talking The Real Deal Charles here: the Bronson of “Death Wish”, “Death Wish 2” and “Death Wish 3” …none of your candy-assed, squeamish liberal stuff !) …..and in the very next scene, by way of a Macho Man encore, del Toro threatens to blow silly `do-gooder` Emily Blunt`s brains out if she doesn’t put her John Hancock to that paper saying that all these carrying-on have been done strictly ``by the book”; "You’d be committing voluntary suicide” del Toro assures Blunt as he presses his revolver more firmly into her neck…..Emily weeps momentarily but happily opts to sign (getting shot once in a movie is enough for even your most hardened Do-Gooder ; there's no point pressing your luck !!...….Sadly the silliness of all this seems to have been lost on many of the critics who - like director Villeneuve- apparently still hanker for old-fashioned, hokey, macho man action yarns about REAL MEN living in a REAL MAN‘S WORLD…..Sorry kids...time to put your comic books away and grow up.