Sicario (translation: Hitman) doesn’t fool around. With an uncanny intensity, it centers on a covert CIA mission to combat Mexican drug cartels–an exercise intended to “create chaos” and “dramatically overreact.” So says the group’s unlikely ringleader, Matt (Josh Brolin), who’s apparently so important he attends a high-level meeting with FBI officials clad in flip-flops and a T-shirt.
The mission itself, however, is far from casual. Along for the ride from The Phoenix FBI is Kate Macy (Emily Blunt), an FBI agent whose specialty is leading raids to free kidnapping victims. She struggles to figure out why she’s been invited along. Serving as a nearly comatose aid to Matt is Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro), perhaps a mysterious Mexican former prosecutor who tells Kate before they embark on the mission “nothing will make sense to your American ears, and you will doubt everything we do.” Alejandro is so calm, his hair could be on fire and he wouldn’t bat an eyelash.
Let’s make a few things clear. Director Denis Villeneuve is a master of the dark underside. His three most recent films (Enemy, Prisoners, and especially the splendid Incendies, all possess a bleak yet highly plausible wisdom. Here he teams with a Del Toro who, having already won an Oscar for a previous drug-cartel-themed film, Traffic, tops not only that performance here but also his completely sociopathic crazy-man in Savages. Brolin, on the heels of his offbeat detective character in Inherent Vice, and Emily Blunt, following her turn as an action-prone character in Edge of Tomorrow, are also both excellent. Then, for good measure, add ace cinematographer Roger Deakins and Oscar-winning soundtrack composer Johann Johannsson. The elements jell into a film that out-actions nearly every action film of late, yet holds its head above the genre fray enough to succeed on multiple, deeper levels.
As set pieces go, you couldn’t wish for two better ones than Sicario’s spectacular traffic shoot out and its opening sequence. In the latter, after a highly suspenseful swat raid, dozens of corpses are discovered lining the walls of an Arizona house deemed to be the site of hostages. The carnage foreshadows the mutilated bodies that will later hang from an overpass in Juarez, Mezico.
No one has ever accused Villeneuve of offering cheerful imagery. In fact, Sicario is a suspense movie that, for effect, uses horror movie tropes to tell its story. When you’ve got a technical and acting crew both this talented, the possibilities are mind-boggling. As is Sicario, despite its closing ambiguity, which given Alejandro’s cryptic nature, fits like a glove.