'Sicario' A Review

Sicario is a crime thriller about FBI agent Kate Macer(Emily Blunt) who gets involved in a questionable CIA operation against a Mexican drug cartel. The film opens on Macer, who is the head of the FBI kidnapping response team, and her team raiding a home in Arizona. They discover that the home has been used as a de facto morgue for a cartel. This instigates her involvement in an inter-departmental  mission against the cartels. She meets the head of the operation Matt Graver(Josh Brolin) and enigmatic consultant Alejandro Gillick(Benicio del Toro). She is taken along as the team dubiously enters Mexico in order to retrieve a prisoner and the operation continues dangerously and suspectly from there.

Unarguably a dynamite cast they, at times, seem underutilized or unchallenged. Brolin approaches his role with such a casualness it periodically boarders on the unreal. He is so relaxed throughout the film his concluding monologue which is "serious" doesn't play. Benicio del Toro gives his best performance in years, although there is a sense of unfulfilled potential, as if he was restrained or not pushed. Blunt's performance is incredible, her character is somewhat mystifying, she becomes marginalized in her own movie. Macer becomes increasingly inconsequential as the plot progresses to the point where she is completely ineffectual. This was obviously a choice, perhaps intended to mirror the futile nature of the drug war itself, perhaps to elucidate the impotence of morality in the modern age, perhaps for the sake of "realism", whatever the intention behind her character arc it is frustrating and disappointing.

Visually the film is pedestrian. There are numerous aerial shots which at first create the desired foreboding but quickly become rote. Considering the heightened subject matter there is considerably little style involved until the conclusion. There is a protracted night vision/thermal scene which is interesting but is totally incongruous with everything before or after.

The structure and narrative of the Sicario are confused. The story takes place, presumably, over the course of a couple days but there's no corresponding sense of immediacy. It is unclear who or what the story is actually about. Is it about Blunt's character, del Toro's character, or the thrice briefly pictured weary Mexican border guard? A choice isn't made, its incomplete.

Interesting subject matter, compelling actors, almost completely discordant.

Rent It.