Sicario

Sicario (2015)

93% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 226 reviews)

Runtime: 121 minutes

Directed by: Denis Villeneuve

Starring: Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, Benicio Del Toro, Victor Garber, Daniel Kaluuya

From: Lionsgate

I apologize for not posting yesterday but since my last post here, when I was able to watch anything it was the first three Friday the 13th movies; the first five I have reviewed here already so when I get to the sixth one I'll post them here and on Letterboxd.

Anyhow, I finally saw this movie last night. It'll be on my Top 10 list of 2015 but I don't love this like many do. I try to explain why in my Letterboxd review below:

Am I a bad member of this site for not having seen a Denis Villenueve movie until I watched this last night? Probably so, but I have to be honest here. I mean, I only finally watched this because Amazon Instant Streaming has been offering for a dollar a few days ago and I couldn't turn down such an offer. As for seeing the rest of his work... if it has the same tone and is unpleasant as this was... I won't be in a big rush to explore his filmography.

The basic plot is straightforward enough: FBI Agent Emily Blunt ends up being part of a task force w/ people affiliated with the Department of Defense (like Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro) and they go after those responsible for a bomb that killed some officers and had previously killed a few dozen people & left their corpses in their safehouse; that means a leader of the drug smugglers Sonora Cartel and meaning spending time in the drug-fueled area of Northern Mexico. A major part of the story is that Blunt and her partner Daniel Kaluuya are straight as an arrow and by the book while these new people are all YOLO and to get the job done they do anything necessary, even if it requires bending or outright breaking the law.

The movie is definitely well-made, from the direction to the acting & the expected expert cinematography from Roger Deakins, and a quality appropriate music score from Johann Johannsson. It's an always interesting movie and there are some incredibly tense scenes. It does show that the scene in Mexico is pretty rough (which is something I have always heard) and it can be argued that the government trying to fight a drug war and win it is incredibly difficult, especially if you have to resort to doing some horrible things to try and take them down.

Unfortunately, I don't know if I'll ever see this movie in full again; it's not an easy watch, or an entirely pleasant one either. I thought a lot of it had a real ugly tone, unrelentingly grim. Blunt's character is that of the outsider and it's appropriate as of course we're outsiders to this lawless world and how she reacts is likely how we would to some of the things she witnesses. That is all well and good, but at times I thought the character wasn't portrayed in the best light, to the point that I tended to side with the rulebreaking “good guys” rather than her and her traditional way of doing things. I don't know if that was the intent or not. Especially in the final act, I don't know if I want to see this movie again, and yet I still gave it 4 stars and it'll be somewhere on my Top 10 of 2015 list, which I'll likely post late next month.

I wish I did not feel that way about this and that I could love it like many do. I guess it's personal taste for these sorts of motion pictures that make it impossible to rate it any higher and for me to be all-in on it.