SICARIO directed by Denis Villeneuve, written by Taylor Sheridan, with Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin and Victor Garber. An Entertainment One release. 121 minutes. Some subtitles. Opens Friday (September 25). Rating: NNNN
Where to watch: iTunes
I’ve lost count of the number of movies – both documentary and dramatic – about the folly of America’s war on drugs. I suppose the movies keep coming because the war keeps going. It’s not like the demand will ever go away, so the supply continues by whatever bloody means are necessary – and so does the war.
Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario is about the war on drugs, no doubt about it. But it’s a superior work in the genre, comparable to Steven Soderbergh’s magnificent Traffic in its scope and sensitivity. It’s an ambitious and smart film, expertly cast and mercilessly executed.
It starts simply enough: to cut off a tentacle of a vicious Mexican drug cartel, Arizona FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) volunteers for a Homeland Security operation tasked with drawing a shadowy kingpin into the light.
But almost before she knows it, Macer winds up neck deep in the mire of ground operations, starting with a questionable incursion into Mexico. When she comes back home, things get awfully confusing. Who’s she working for anyway? Which government agency is her cynical commander (Josh Brolin) really affiliated with? And why does the war seem so personal for his right-hand man (Benicio Del Toro)?
Like Villeneuve’s last all-star effort, 2013’s Prisoners, Sicario is a stock thriller amped up considerably by in-telligent direction and committed performances. But unlike Prisoners, it has a script that doesn’t spin out into silliness, and it features a minimum of scenery-chewing.
Instead, Sicario is a raw, muscular movie with terrific work by Blunt and Del Toro, quietly debating urgent moral questions between stunning set pieces. (Brolin’s good, too, but his role has less texture by definition.)
From the first scene, Villeneuve and cinematographer Roger Deakins establish a bristling aesthetic of constant danger: a mistake will get you killed, but so will following proper procedure. All anyone can do is push forward and do what’s necessary, and figure out how to justify it when the smoke clears.
See Q&A with director Denis Villeneuve here.
normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner
