Movie Info
Movie Name: Sicario
Studio: Black Label Media
Genre(s): Drama/Action/Adventure/Mystery/Suspense
Release Date(s): May 19, 2015 (Cannes)/September 18, 2015 (US)
MPAA Rating: R
Bad day at the office
Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) is part of an FBI team dealing in kidnappings. When she and her team discover a house filled with the corpses tied to a Mexican drug lord rigged with explosives, Kate is contacted to join a CIA special mission led by Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) and a mysterious man named Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro). Kate and her partner Reggie Wayne (Daniel Kaluuya) learn that the mission might not be entirely legal, and with questionable methods, Kate finds herself entering a world that might not be escapable.
Directed by Denis Villeneuve, Sicario is a crime thriller. The movie was released to critical acclaim and strong box office. The film was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, and Best Sound Editing.
The movie Sicario isn’t necessarily my type of movie. I was soured by Traffic (despite liking Benicio del Toro in it), and Sicario seemed like the 2015 version of Traffic. That isn’t a very fair assessment and the movie is quite good.
You think your coworkers are tough to work with…
It is hard to say what the plot of Sicario is. The story isn’t very linear and has a lot of branches though a summation of the story would be quite short. What Sicario does is raise a lot of ethical issues and questions that are unanswerable because they are moral questions. Is getting in bed with your enemy a good thing if it creates a more stable, less dangerous environment?
The cast also is great. Blunt is good as the rather innocent Kate who just doesn’t realize what she’s getting into and how powerful the men she’s working with (and against) are. By the end, she kind of reminds me of Francis McDormand’s Fargo character who does not understand why there has to be so much killing to stop the crime. Benicio del Toro is also great like normal. His sleepy look combined with a sense of danger he brings to role. I never really like Brolin as the kind of hippy-ish leader of the group Matt Graver. Daniel Kaluuya is good as Blunt’s voice of reason. The movie tries to demonstrate how the war affects people on the Mexican side of the border, with Silvio (played by Maximiliano Hernández) and his family, but I wish they had either increased the role or cut it because it didn’t develop enough for me.
Thank you so much for getting me involved with this, Kate
Visually the movie help amplify the chaos and confusion. It utilizes the desert and the south Texas location great with great sunsets and the sand. The whole tunnel raid sequence has a nice claustrophobic feel and I like what the filmmaker did with the night vision stuff.
Sicario is a strong picture that raises questions about right and wrong in regards to the outcome. Are you willing to make sacrifices to save lives even if criminals still run free? Sicario will leave you wondering what is the best solution to the U.S. drug problem and if there is any chance it will ever get better. Sicario was followed by Sicario: Day of the Soldado in 2018.
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