Sicario
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Starring: Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, Victor Garber
Four stars
The billion-dollar drug trade along the US-Mexico border is so bloody and lawless, the line between right and wrong has become impossibly blurred.
Such is the dilemma at the heart of Sicario, a grisly, disturbing portrait of the malignance and corruption inherent in the war on drugs.
Troubling, sad and deeply compelling, the film succeeds on every level: story, performances, music and photography. But the subject and perspective are relentlessly grim.
In his debut screenplay, Taylor Sheridan (best known for his recurring role on TV biker drama Sons of Anarchy) explores the complicated legal and moral territory covered by officials on both sides of the border. A Texas native, he visited Mexico often as a kid and wanted to explore the anarchic violence that reigns there. He finds a rocky landscape where even the most righteous can find themselves doing wrong.
Director Denis Villeneuve skilfully brings the story to life, setting finely tuned performances to a cacophonous soundtrack under Roger Deakins’s masterful lens to create a searing and timely thriller.
Kate (Emily Blunt) is a by-the-book FBI agent invited to join a covert operation after discovering a house full of corpses, believed to be the work of a Mexican drug cartel. She joins cocky government agent Matt (Josh Brolin) and mysterious operative Alejandro (Benicio del Toro), both of whom bend the law as their needs dictate.
Kate is whisked into Juarez, Mexico, a blood-spattered battleground where headless bodies hang from bridges and gunfire rattles as background noise. She is after those responsible for the murders of the people in that house, but Alejandro and Matt have bigger plans: They want the cartel kingpin, and don’t plan to take him alive.
Kate also learns that Alejandro’s motives are not so clear-cut as they initially seemed. He is vengeful and focused, cryptic and poetic. To him, finding the cartel boss “would be like discovering a vaccine” to the addiction, death and corruption that drugs cause.
Blunt and del Toro act with their eyes, which is perfect here. Hers alternately convey interest, anxiety and determination. His half-mast glance says Alejandro has seen more than he ever wanted to. As the story progresses, his personal connection to the cartels becomes more clear, blurring the shades of grey even more.
Deakins’s breathtaking photography is all about darkness and light and the space between the two, a perfect visual expression of the story’s themes. After 11 nominations, let this be the film that finally brings Deakins his Oscar.
The sense of doom in Sicario also shines through in Jóhann Jóhannsson's foreboding score, which goes from industrial grating to sounding like a fog horn.
Villeneuve has crafted a compelling, unflinching look at the deadly and complicated war on drugs, one that will challenge the attitudes of even the most straight-edged and law-abiding viewers.
The director will take on similar themes again in his next film, the sequel to Blade Runner. Sicario suggests he is ready.
* Associated Press
