It's kind of amazing to compare the two most intricate and
insightful films about the drug war of the last fifteen years, Steven
Soderbergh's Traffic and Denis Villeneuve's Sicario. Soderbergh's film
still had that slight glimmer of hope that maybe, somehow, the "War on
Drugs" wasn't the complete debacle it turned out to be. There's no such
glimmer of hope in Sicario,
a film that says emphatically, "THE WAR IS OVER" even though it
continues to be fought on the bloody streets by those with darkness in their
souls. There are no good guys or bad guys in this fight, there's nothing but
grey, and wading into the murk is what Villeneuve does better than any director
working today.
Already having explored the heart of
darkness with Prisoners and Enemy,
now Villeneuve uses the drug war as his battlefield, only not the one our
government would have you know about. Working from an intense, go-for-broke screenplay
by Taylor Sheridan, the film is both an action piece and a complicated moral
tale with both sides given equal due. Roger Deakins' spotless cinematography
grips you from the opening moment as a drug hideout is busted down by an
armored vehicle. Streaming into the home are a team of FBI agents led by Kate
Mercer (Emily Blunt), and after surviving a harrowing close-quarters gunfight
something horrific is uncovered. Her discovery gets a ton of attention, along
with her past accomplishments for the Bureau, and she's recruited by Matt
Graver (Josh Brolin, plastered with a shit-eating grin the whole time) for a
special operation, an off-the-books mission for the good ol' U.S. government to
take down a Mexican drug cartel.
From the moment the idealistic Kate
crosses the border into Mexico, during an anxiety-inducing journey through the
run-down Mexican streets littered with hanging corpses and corrupt cops, she's
in a world she never knew existed. It's a world where people like Alejandro
(Benicio Del Toro, who was also in Traffic) are allowed to operate with vicious
impunity. Described as Matt's "Bird Dog", Alejandro is a lethal
killer working against the cartels for reasons that seem very personal.
The real war being fought here is one of
ideology, with Kate's naiveté crashing against the "ends justify the
means" attitude of her testosterone-jacked colleagues. Without the years
of ugly experience coloring her world view, Kate, still believes in playing it
by the book. She still sees people as fundamentally good, even though all of
the evidence around her screams the contrary. By putting her as the focal
point, the story is essentially making Kate our surrogate into this madness,
which makes us worry that she's far out of her depth. It's a strong role for
Blunt and one that continues her turn into a believable star of such genre
movies. While not quite the nuts and bolts hero she was in Edge of Tomorrow, Blunt is at
the center of nearly every major set piece and is terrific in all of them. And
when things quiet down she sells Kate's growing fear at this ugly world of
black-hearted men she's stumbled into.
Eventually the film becomes something
different from how it started, and the focus shifts more to Alejandro and part
to play in this sordid mess. We lose a little bit of our emotional connection
to the story as Kate moves to the background, but Alejandro is so complex that
it remains compelling. His part to play is more conventionally
revenge-motivated, but ends on a satisfyingly shocking note. It also helps to
have Del Toro in such an enigmatic role. If he was the hopeful heart of Traffic now he's the vicious attack dog,
and frankly he's never been more commanding even with little dialogue. Brolin
has the most fun as the flip flop-wearing Matt, while there are other strong
supporting turns from Jon Bernthal and Daniel Kaluuya.
Aided by Deakins' searing imagery, Sicario is another masterful effort from
Villeneuve and one of the must-see movies of the year.
Rating: 4 out of 5
