Review: Sicario


Emily Blunt plays an FBI agent with experience in tactical methods, who is requested to help out a special-op task force headed by supposed Defence Department contractor Josh Brolin that is trying to help win the battle against Mexican drug cartels on the US/Mexican border. Also helping out in an advisory capacity is the mysterious and clearly bad arse Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro). It’s not long before the very by-the-book Blunt notices that her new associates are perfectly happy to throw the book out when dealing with extremely dangerous criminals. Victor Garber plays Blunt’s boss, whilst Jon Bernthal plays a cop who picks Blunt up in a bar.


Director Denis Villeneuve (“Prisoners”) gives us a pretty dark and brutal 2015 war-on-drugs movie, scripted by actor Taylor Sheridan. There’s some pretty brutal images here and there (the opening discovery in particular is hard to forget), and two rather ruthless characterisations by Josh Brolin and a particularly impressive Benicio Del Toro. This is seriously deadly, horrible stuff Emily Blunt’s character is thrust into here, and Villeneuve builds the tension and dangerous atmosphere pretty well. Ace cinematographer Roger Deakins (“The Shawshank Redemption”, “Jarhead”, “Prisoners”) also does a great job at making sure things aren’t too dark to the point of being murky, and he doesn’t resort to shaking the shit out of the camera, either.


Emily Blunt is good as always, but holy shit does Benicio Del Toro own this film. He has presence, charisma, authority, and coolness that just can’t be taught. The guy immediately steals the film without having to do anything except be the coolest guy in the room. Brolin brings his own macho charisma, but no one can touch Del Toro in this. To be honest, the subject matter isn’t particularly my thing, but if there’s any real issue it’s that Blunt’s trajectory is a tad predictable. It’d be even more predictable if they played up her being a woman among men, but even so she’s still the innocent thrown into a dangerous situation without all of the facts given to her, and alongside some rather rule-bending colleagues. It’s been done before.


A thematically very dark, rock-solid film full of tension that occasionally depends upon some fairly familiar genre tropes. Fans of this sort of thing will likely love it, and the acting is tops, especially Del Toro. I wasn’t really on the bandwagon early on in his career (I couldn’t stand his gimmicky work in “The Usual Suspects”, much as I love the film), but he absolutely sold me on his talent here.


Rating: B-

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