SILVER SCREEN CINEMA

The Sterling Standard in Movie Reviews 

Follow Us On:

SICARIO

 

War on Drugs Is Hell

Lionsgate
 121 Minutes
Rated: R
Directed by: Denis Villeneuve 
Starring: Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin
B
Sicario

Few political slogans are as wildly inaccurate as the so-called “War on Drugs,” an effort that has been going on for decades. Whatever someone thinks about this “war,” one thing is perfectly clear. It’s certainly not being fought like any actual war in our nation’s history. But what would happen if we did decide to “take the gloves off” and go after the drug dealers and cartels in the same way we’ve gone after various terrorist groups in the last decade? Director Denis Villeneuve tries to pose that exact question in his latest movie, Sicario.

 

Villeneuve’s last film, Prisoners, skillfully blended a traditional crime thriller with a morality play to explore the question of just how far a good, previously moral, law-abiding man is willing to go to rescue his kidnapped daughter. Sicario doesn’t have that same personal urgency as Prisoners did, but the stakes are much larger. Despite those larger stakes, Sicario often loses sight of them in its often muddled second half.

 

Sicario begins with a bang, literally, as FBI agents led by Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) raid a drug house in a Phoenix suburb and make two shocking discoveries. First, they find dozens of bodies hidden in the house’s walls. Second, two of the agents are killed by an exploding booby trap. Kate and her boss (Victor Garber) are naturally distraught, and she soon agrees to join an anti-drug task force led by government mystery man Matt Graver (Josh Brolin).

 

As Matt explains his task force to Kate, their goal is to disrupt the drug cartels and bring down the big fish in the drug trade by operating both in the United States and Mexico when needed. To that end, he introduces her to an even more mysterious man Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro), who has quite an in-depth knowledge of the trade. Kate’s first assignment with the task force is to provide support when they go into Juarez to bring back the currently imprisoned brother of the leader of one of the cartels.

 

Whatever good feelings Kate might have had about the task force quickly dissipate, beginning when the pickup of the prisoner turns into a bloody shootout after Kate’s convoy gets stuck in a traffic jam on the bridge beween Juarez and El Paso. The more time Kate spends with the task force, the more she begins to realize that they aren’t interested in gathering evidence to make arrests. In fact, their methods often wind up hurting the government’s ability to get convictions. Instead, the task force is going after the money the cartel has squirreled away in an effort to hit the drug lords where it hurts. And, the force isn’t all that particular about abiding by constitutional guarantees either.

 

Eventually, Kate and the audience realize (the audience coming to that realization a few scenes before Kate does) that this task force is not a police operation but a military one, targeting the drug cartels by any means possible. Most of her fellow task force members are military personnel, and Alejandro and Matt aren’t averse to using strongarm tactics to get information from recalcitrant suspects. Eventually, Kate understands that her only function on the task force is to provide it with some degree of legal cover in the event its actions are ever questioned. Pretty soon, she winds up on the outside, occasionally getting mere glimpses of to what’s going on.

 

Villeneuve tries to do in Sicario the same thing he pulled off in Prisoners, namely to get people thinking about a complex moral and ethical issue within the framework of a standard, albeit well-made, thriller. In fact, the issue is in some ways the same in both movies: to what extent do the ends justify the means. However, this issue was far more immediate in Prisoners, in which a desperate father was willing to do anything it took to find his missing daughter. In Sicario, the villains are just as evil and twisted as was the kidnapper in Prisoners but the authorities in pursuit of them seem to be too far removed from the issue to raise the emotional stakes with the audience.

 

There is a huge twist at the end of Sicario, one that leads to a truly shocking ending. However, for most of its second half, Sicario drags, not in anfilm of a good bit of its built-up suspense.

 

The first half of Sicario, though, before the bigger issues bog the movie down, is as suspenseful as any movie this year. Villeneuve and cinematographer Roger Deakins invest the audience in the action by staging the various raids and chases in closeup, putting the audience squarely in the middle. The shootout on the bridge, as the camera moves from one car to the next, from impatient tourists to men getting their weapons ready, is by far the film’s best scene. Unfortunately, since it sets such a high bar, it’s tough for the rest of the movie to match it. In fact, it’s only at the very end of Sicario, when the audience finally realizes the role Alejandro plays in the proceedings that the movie comes close to matching that earlier level of intensity.

 

The role of Alejandro is probably Benicio Del Toro’s best since his Oscar-winning performance in Traffic. Del Toro has been known to sleepwalk and mumble his way through his share of movies, but the actor is fully invested in his role here. Emily Blunt also is quite good here. After her recent role in Edge of Tomorrow, audiences are much more open to accepting Blunt as an action star, and this movie should cement her reputation in that regard.

 

For those willing to view Sicario merely as an action thriller, the movie is quite effective despite a slow spell in the middle. As a serious drama, however, it comes up short. Villeny way helped by a highly confusing action sequence involving a late night raid through a tunnel under the U.S.-Mexico border, which is largely shown using night vision lenses. It’s predictably and intentionally confusing, but that confusion deprives the euve doesn’t provide any answers to the dilemma he’s raised, of course, but he also never frames the issues in a way that will allow the audience to use the film as a basis for their own responses. That doesn’t mean the audience won’t be suitably impressed by the skill of the cast and crew (especially Deakin’s often brilliant location work). It’s just that Sicario settles for slick entertainment rather than any real insight.

Read other reviews of Sicario:

 

Sicario (2015) on IMDb

BUY EMILY BLUNT ON AMAZON: