Review 451: Sicario
Sicario is a brutal, visceral, unflinching, gripping and suspenseful crime thriller and an excellent addition to Denis Villeneuve's still budding American filmography.In Mexico, SICARIO means hitman. In the lawless border area stretching between the U.S. and Mexico, Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) an idealistic FBI agent is recruited by elite government task force official Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) to aid in the escalating war against drugs. Led by a mysterious and enigmatic consultant Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro), the team sets out on a clandestine mission which forces Kate to question everything she knows and believes in order to survive.
The plot is smart, intricate, intriguing and engrossing, it draws us as an audience into this harsh, brutal, utterly unforgiving environment with it's supenseful atmosphere and an engrossing subject matter it doesn't shy away from. It seeps into us as an audience and makes us feel the weight of the conflict at hand.
It's open-eye, harsh, unflinching look at the Mexican Drug War as well as the ineffectiveness this war brings and it touches on strong themes of morality, control and fear. It also explores the space between good and bad and right and wrong.
Morality: Through Kate Macer’s eyes, we see that the DEA & U.S. army take several morally questionable actions in the War on drugs. But the beauty of Sicario is that it never presents definitive answers or tells us how to feel about them. In Sacrio, the line between good and evil is blured and the film makes no appologies.
Much like Villeneuve's previous film Prisoners, it forces us to ask these moral questions and draw our own conclusions. Different characters are introduced and this comes with different perspectives: Matt Graver's team tries to reestablish order through force; other such as Jon Bernthal's corrupt cop Ted are drawn to courruption through easy money; others such as Maximiliano Hernandez's Silvo do what they can to try and feed their children and keep a roof over their heads. Kate, on the other hand, is repulsed by the brutal, out-of-the-box way of getting things done. She's fighting with American morality and American rules of Justice. Her enemies: The cartels have none of that: No rules, no laws, no moral.s
Control: Sicario is a film that has a anti-war stance but does it in a unique way: It shows us that there are no victories in the American War on Drugs, only consequences. We see the loss of life and the dehumanising effect it has on the characters particular Kate and Alejandro and yet we see no real victories.
Fear: As foreign correspondent and investigative journalist Sebastian Rotella stated: American War on Drugs is turning us into the very monsters we are trying to defeat. As the film we see that the war these people are fighting is taking its toll on them
Director Denis Villeneuve's direction is superbly precise, beautifully and expertly crafting suspense and some pretty brutal action scenes. This film is defiantly not for the faint hearted. The cinematography is beautiful and captures the beauty and danger of Mexico; the colour beige to particularly emphasised to express nutrality aluding to the films complex nature of morality and the dry desert tones. No one is safe in this very realistic depiction of Mexico.
The scenery is breathtaking, the action scenes are brutal, intense and gripping; the border crossing sequence is a particuarly, noteworthy highlight because it's the first time Kate starts to truly disintigrate because she comes from a world she's held accountable for every bullet she fires and she's in a land where people just spray bullets and she had to shoot somebody in order to survive.
Fear: As foreign correspondent and investigative journalist Sebastian Rotella stated: American War on Drugs is turning us into the very monsters we are trying to defeat. As the film we see that the war these people are fighting is taking its toll on them
Director Denis Villeneuve's direction is superbly precise, beautifully and expertly crafting suspense and some pretty brutal action scenes. This film is defiantly not for the faint hearted. The cinematography is beautiful and captures the beauty and danger of Mexico; the colour beige to particularly emphasised to express nutrality aluding to the films complex nature of morality and the dry desert tones. No one is safe in this very realistic depiction of Mexico.
The scenery is breathtaking, the action scenes are brutal, intense and gripping; the border crossing sequence is a particuarly, noteworthy highlight because it's the first time Kate starts to truly disintigrate because she comes from a world she's held accountable for every bullet she fires and she's in a land where people just spray bullets and she had to shoot somebody in order to survive.
The production design is superb, the costumes are rugged and get the films tone right (as Kate starts to break, the colors of her clothes begin to become less bright and more washed out), the score by Jóhann Jóhannsson is eerie and suspenseful, the locations are fantastic and the ending was deeply harrowing
Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro & Josh Brolin are stellar in their roles. Each had their own prominant storyline. Although they intertwine, they are all connected thematically, we see the toll that this war on drugs has on them and how ineffective this war is. Each of the characters have those choices and so moraility gets challenged in a way with each of these three characters.
Once again, Emily Blunt shows us how remarkably talented an actress she is in the role of FBI agent Kate Macer. Blunt is a who can convey a lot with her eyes without saying much
Kate Macer is not just our audience surrogate, she's the moral compass of the film. She's a woman who's been put front-and-centre in a mans world. There's a steeliness and a strength but she's also quite shy.
Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro & Josh Brolin are stellar in their roles. Each had their own prominant storyline. Although they intertwine, they are all connected thematically, we see the toll that this war on drugs has on them and how ineffective this war is. Each of the characters have those choices and so moraility gets challenged in a way with each of these three characters.
Once again, Emily Blunt shows us how remarkably talented an actress she is in the role of FBI agent Kate Macer. Blunt is a who can convey a lot with her eyes without saying much
Kate Macer is not just our audience surrogate, she's the moral compass of the film. She's a woman who's been put front-and-centre in a mans world. There's a steeliness and a strength but she's also quite shy.
She gets thrust into this team that's looking more holistically and globally at a particular cartel that they're trying to eliminate. has no idea what she's getting into and is mostly kept in the dark about what's going on for the majority of the film. The great conflict about Kate is that as she delves deeper into the mission, she discovers there's a sort of temptation with this world of the C.I.A and how matters like this are handled and she realises she's not even scratching the surface doing things by-the-book. The team do things completelly illegally, so there's that constant pull and the magnet where she sees the benefit of what they do in some ways and how quickly they get things done. Kate witnesses slowly that the violence coming from the South is growing and coming closer and closer to her own town; she feels that she has less and less power against that violence. As the film goes on, she starts to doubt her own ways of doing things. She's in a world she doesn't understand and is unwilling to bend the rules as she's been taught.
Very quickly, Kate's world is turned upside down when she's hit on by the very brutal and harsh reality of the world along with the nuance that comes with that and how she's someone who's trying to save face through the film. Within that bewilderment, she's trying desperately to cover that up and be a part of that and do her job and she finds herself unable to do that which is ultimately her identity - she doesn't have a home life or husband. Without the mission, Kate is nothing and that's slowly being taken away from her.
As the film progresses, the toll the mission takes on her becomes more apparent both visually and in Blunt's superb portrayal.
Benicio del Toro is simply brilliant as Alejandro Gillick, deriving an spellbinding, hypnotic performance. Gallick is a very enigmatic character. He’s one of the best hitmen in the business but throughout the film we’re hinted that and we’re forced to wonder if he’s acting on his own agenda; so we’re never quite sure what if he's more committed to the mission or that agenda. His family was killed in the drugs wars and he's become an assassin against the drug cartels There's a sadness about him and we realise what a great loss he's suffered and what's driving his agenda.
He's a guy who's been beaten down emotionally, he's hired by the DEA to do their dirty work to achieve what they see as a greater good. He's a consequence of the innocence that Kate possesses; she reminds him of himself when he was young and idealistic and his twisted attempt to educate her is to prevent her from becoming like him. Alejandro is a man of few words and del Toro manages to convey a lot with just his body language.
However as the film progresses, it becomes more and more apparent that these acts have taken their toll on Alejandro.
Josh Brolin is excellent playing Matt Graver, he's the classic American soldier, Law Enforcement, C.I.A. guy who is conviced that we are at war with people who are much more depraved than and much more immoral than we are and the only way to keep America safe is to fight that war on their terms. What's interesting about him is that he's not zealot or fantatic; he's an extremely well trained, lifelong soldier he's somebody who doesn't care what people think about him.
Jon Bernthal, Victor Garber, Maximiliano Hernandez, Jeffrey Donovan and Daniel Kaluuya round out the films cast with noteworthy performances.
Sicario is and hard hitting, 5/5.
The Anonymous Critic.
As the film progresses, the toll the mission takes on her becomes more apparent both visually and in Blunt's superb portrayal.
Benicio del Toro is simply brilliant as Alejandro Gillick, deriving an spellbinding, hypnotic performance. Gallick is a very enigmatic character. He’s one of the best hitmen in the business but throughout the film we’re hinted that and we’re forced to wonder if he’s acting on his own agenda; so we’re never quite sure what if he's more committed to the mission or that agenda. His family was killed in the drugs wars and he's become an assassin against the drug cartels There's a sadness about him and we realise what a great loss he's suffered and what's driving his agenda.
He's a guy who's been beaten down emotionally, he's hired by the DEA to do their dirty work to achieve what they see as a greater good. He's a consequence of the innocence that Kate possesses; she reminds him of himself when he was young and idealistic and his twisted attempt to educate her is to prevent her from becoming like him. Alejandro is a man of few words and del Toro manages to convey a lot with just his body language.
However as the film progresses, it becomes more and more apparent that these acts have taken their toll on Alejandro.
Josh Brolin is excellent playing Matt Graver, he's the classic American soldier, Law Enforcement, C.I.A. guy who is conviced that we are at war with people who are much more depraved than and much more immoral than we are and the only way to keep America safe is to fight that war on their terms. What's interesting about him is that he's not zealot or fantatic; he's an extremely well trained, lifelong soldier he's somebody who doesn't care what people think about him.
Jon Bernthal, Victor Garber, Maximiliano Hernandez, Jeffrey Donovan and Daniel Kaluuya round out the films cast with noteworthy performances.
Sicario is and hard hitting, 5/5.
The Anonymous Critic.
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