SICARIO (2015) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

sICARIO (2015) movie

Genre             |  Thriller

Classification   |   MA 15+

Running time   |   121 minutes

Released         |   24 September 2015

cast

Emily Blunt ... Kate Macer
Benicio Del Toro ... Alejandro
​Josh Brolin ... Matt Graver
Victor Garber ... Dave Jennings
Jon Bernthal ... Ted
Daniel Kaluuya ... ​Reggie Wayne

director

Denis Villeneuve

writer

​Taylor Sheridan ... (written by)

cinematographer

​Roger Deakins

music

​Jóhann Jóhannsson

film editor

Joe Walker

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box office result

Worldwide             $​​​84,872,444  

Australia                 $​​​3,709,028

North America       $​46,889,293

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the best dialogue

Alejandro: Nothing will make sense to your American ears, and you will doubt everything that we do, but in the end you will understand.

Matt: Medellin refers to a time when one group controlled every aspect of the drug trade, providing a measure of order that we could control. And until somebody finds a way to convince 20% of the population to stop snorting and smoking that shit, order's the best we can hope for. And what you saw up there, was Alejandro working toward returning that order.
Kate Macer: Alejandro works for the fucking Colombian Cartel.
Matt: He works for the competition. Alejandro works for anyone who will point him toward the people who made him. Us. Them. Anyone who will turn him loose. So, he can get the person that cut off his wife's head, and threw his daughter into a vat of acid. Yeah. That's what we're dealing with.

Kate Macer: [after an illegal gun battle] What am I doing here?
Matt: What you're doing here is you're giving us the opportunity to shake the tree and create chaos. That's what this is! In the meantime, just sponge everything up you see. Learn! That's why you're here.

SICARIO (2015) MOVIE IMAGES

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SICARIO (2015) STORY SYNOPSIS

​After rising through the ranks of her male-dominated profession, idealistic FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) receives a top assignment. Recruited by mysterious government official Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), Kate joins a task force for the escalating war against drugs. Led by the intense and shadowy Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro), the team travels back-and-forth across the U.S.-Mexican border, using one cartel boss (Bernardo Saracino) to flush out a bigger one (Julio Cesar Cedillo).

SICARIO (2015) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 20 September 2015
​Pop Movee Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

SICARIO is, quite simply, the best film of 2015. Denis Villeneuve’s tale of United States law enforcement efforts to stem the tide of drugs flowing across from its border with Mexico is not one that paints its protagonists in either stark black or white. The colours are mixed, creating a murky, grey hue where protagonist’s motives are questionable and the standard rules of engagement can no longer be applied as lawless Mexican Drug Barons justify horrific mass murder in the pursuit of protecting their drug importation business into the United States.

Dropped into the middle of this war is Emily Blunt’s Kate Macer, an FBI Agent who is learning the hard way that traditional crime-fighting methods have little impact. After uncovering a gruesome house of horrors and losing two Officers in the process, Kate volunteers to become part of an inter-government agency team whose purpose is to disrupt the local legitimate business front of a Mexican Drug lord. Kate’s suspicions are immediately raised when the team’s leader Matt (Josh Brolin) and “Consultant” Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro) fly to the border city of El Paso and take a heavily-armed team across into its sister Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez to collect a high-profile drug-running operative from local authorities.

From the start to finish of this first major set-piece, Villeneuve elevates SICARIO into more than just a movie about United States’ efforts to stop drugs coming from Mexico. First and foremost is the suspense. Like finger nails being dragged down a chalkboard, the viewer’s heckles are raised as the US team make a high-speed dash across the border and back to collect their prize. All the way along, every character acknowledges that the Drug lord’s men will make their move as the team are trying to get back across the border. Despite the inevitability of the shoot-out, Kate doesn’t take her participation in it for granted, whereas Matt and his US Special Forces team take a certain amount of delight in bragging that the mayhem that unfolds won’t even make the El Paso news.

Suspecting she may be in over her head, Kate turns to her FBI partner Reggie (Daniel Kaluuya) for help and support. Arriving back in Phoenix, Reggie, Kate, Matt and Alejandro drive two hours south to Tucson in an effort to uncover where and how major drug shipments have been making their way into the US. Kate and Reggie threaten to walk if Matt doesn’t tell them what the hell is going on.  Not even Reggie’s military background prepares him for how far he, Kate and Matt are operating outside the law. Even more troubling is Alejandro’s role in the operation.

The triumph of SICARIO is the level of success it achieves in immersing the viewer so completely in its story. It also manages to achieve a rare feat, switching the story’s point-of-view so completely in the Third Act; revealing the real purpose for Kate’s participation with Matt and his team. In terms of performances, every single actor excels in their character. Emily Blunt is wonderful and it’s not hard to draw comparisons between Kate Macer and Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling from 1991’s SILECE OF THE LAMBS, who was similarly drawn into grand game of cat and mouse with Anthony Hopkin’s Hannibal Lecter. SICARIO doesn’t possess the equivalent of Lecter, as its “Big Bad” is more deadly and far-reaching in the supply of drugs into the US. If anything, Josh Brolin’s Matt is closet the film comes to an identifiable antagonist, as his Black-Ops approach to beating the Mexican Drug lords doesn’t sit well with either Kate or Reggie.

What of Benicio Del Toro? At first, he seems to be a spectator to events, but the longer the film plays the greater is his involvement. Del Toro is a real talent; there’s no doubting it. Some actors need to go “BIG” in an effort to achieve a physical dimension to their performance. With Del Toro, it’s almost the complete opposite. The manner in which he asserts himself throughout the film involves small actions performed in very close proximity to his fellow performers. In one scene early in the film, he simply stands in front of his seated prisoner and almost thrusts his crotch in his face and bears down upon him as he spits Mexican at him. Del Toro is completely asexual in the way he does it, but it’s a clear psychological ploy designed to humiliate and degrade the captured man. It may not be a performance that pulls Award nominations, but it is one that helps make SICARIO one of the best films in recent memory.

​Performances and story aside, both SICARIO’s cinematography and musical score help to create a memorable film. For God’s sake, could somebody please give Roger Deakins an Academy Award. This man has lensed so many great films over the last thirty years, it’s hard to believe that he hasn’t been recognised with a swag of trophies. As Director of Photography on SICARIO, Deakins manages to capture some truly surreal images of outback Texas and New Mexico, as well as the gritty, worn-torn like suburbs of the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez. Similarly, Johann Johansson’s musical score builds slowly and ominously like the all-consuming desert elements of Mother Nature around the characters, slowing engulfing them in events over which they have no real control.

​SICARIO is a memorable film. At times, it’s not easy to watch, but it never waivers from the story it’s trying to tell. Even scenes that seem trivial add layers of intrigue to a story that builds to its conclusion right from its opening moments. Denis Villeneuve has cemented his reputation as a Director of real substance and skill with SICARIO and SONS OF ANARCHY actor Taylor Sheridan’s first feature film script is an absolute knock-out. SICARIO will test many viewers as its characters actions are, for the most part, the greyest of grey. People may disagree with its politics, but there’s no doubting SICARIO is a rare film that transcends itself from being just a movie into something far greater – a work of art.

SICARIO (2015) USEFUL LINKS

​Sicario (2015 film) - Wikipedia
​Sicario (2015) - IMDb
​Sicario (2015) - Rotten Tomatoes

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