Sicario

Year: 2015
Genre: Action
Directed: Denis Villeneuve
Stars: Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, Victor Garber, Jon Bernthal, Daniel Kaluuya, Jeffrey Donovan, Raoul Max Trujillo, Julio Cedillo, Hank Rogerson, Bernardo Saracino, Maximiliano Herndez
Production: Lionsgate

Benicio Del Toro's Alejandro Gillick is the key to this entire film. When we first meet him, he doesn't so much introduce himself as he emerges like a enigmatic Mephisto. He remains at arms length throughout the plot; biding time, leaching forward, coolly assessing the situation before he takes his closing shot. Any sense of justice and idealism that Del Toro brought to his character in the similarly themed Traffic (2000) is completely gone; replaced by the deadened gaze of an angry and dangerous tiger shark.

The story of Sicario however does not start with Alejandro but with forthright FBI agent Kate Macer (Blunt) and her drug enforcement team. They raid a cartel safe house in Chandler, Arizona and find dozens of decaying corpses as well as a deadly bobby trap that kills two of her agents. Despite this, her superiors recommend she joins a Department of Defense-CIA task force who are tracking down the man responsible for the death of her mates. When she joins however, she descends into the chaos, murder and deceit that plagues the border between El Paso and Juarez. Leading her down the rabbit hole is gung-ho CIA agent Matt Graver (Brolin) and along for the ride is her partner Reggie (Kaluuya) who like Kate seems completely out of his depth.

Much like in director Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners (2013) and Incendies (2010), Sicario is an ugly story made beautiful by a canny eye for detail and an unflinching dive into the darkest of the human soul. The glorious vistas and bird's eye footage takes the film's similarities to Apocalypse Now (1979) to a jarring extreme but proves at times even more alienating. The God of Sicario not only doesn't know, he doesn't care to know.

Wanna see a magic trick?

In the dark and unflinching world of Sicario, the only ones who care plumb the depths of drug cartel hell are but degrees away from the drug traffickers they're trying to capture and control. Brolin's Graver seems to almost take relish in his job which includes gun-play, torture and even enemy collusion. You never know whether he's keeping Kate and Reggie in the dark for good reason or if he simply gets off on watching them squirm. While Alejandro is laconic and foreboding, Graver is about as close to a magician as you're liable to see in this movie; he walks in, tell you to your face you're going to be tricked...and does it.

Fly home little Starling...

If there's a weak spot to this movie it's Emily Blunt as Kate. At her best she tries to impose herself among a group of wolves and succeeds in being useful in a fight or two. Yet at her worst, her main function is to seek and absorb information while looking forlorn and Bambi (1942)-esque. I understand the limits of justice and nobility is a major theme but wouldn't the chilly fatalism of the plot hold more sway if the forces that be, cut a Dana Scully to the quick instead of a dime novel Clarice Starling?

The unbelievably of the protagonist is a crippling delta of the film but is by no means a fatal one. As a whole, the film is a near masterpiece of mood, tension and the ruthlessness of man. As a film whose main theme is violence, the gore is surprisingly tame; this movie won't dare be so obtuse as to coat itself with layers of sinew. It's the atmosphere of violence that you walk away with. An atmosphere tearful of the loss of innocence and putrid with the specter of death.

Final Grade: B-