OCTOBER 7, 2015
The first five minutes of “Sicario” are among the most suspenseful I’ve experienced in a film in years. An FBI Special Weapons & Tactics unit, led by agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), is descending on an Arizona home on a kidnapping rescue mission, but once their tank crashes through the home’s front wall, all hell suddenly breaks loose. As a jaded moviegoer, I don’t often experience a moment when my jaw drops in shock, but as this opening sequence progressed, it happened not once but twice. I will save the reveal for you until you see “Sicario,” but by the end of the opening, I was deeply unsettled in the realization that there’s no telling where this film may go.
Kate’s heroism comes to the attention of her boss (Victor Garber), who offers her the opportunity to work with Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), an advisor from the Department of Defense, determined to find those who were responsible. Anxious to make a difference, Kate quickly volunteers. OK, I get it. I saw last year’s “Edge of Tomorrow” where Tom Cruise gets schooled by a kick-ass Blunt. That’s where we’re going. Strong woman butts heads at the start but routs the bad guys at the end. I’ve seen this movie before. Good, I can relax.
How wrong I was.
Upon landing in El Paso, Graver whisks Kate across the border for an illegal raid in Juarez, kidnaps the brother of the area’s drug kingpin, is caught in a fierce shootout amid gridlocked bridge traffic (a harrowing sequence) and back across the border to torture their abductee. Kate is kept out of the loop as to the reasons behind all their illegal activity, and she begins to wonder: These are the good guys?
Remember that unsettling feeling from the first scene that you thought you lost? Well, it comes back quickly, only more so. And that’s only the beginning.
French Canadian director Denis Villeneuve is a name you’ll want to remember. You’ll be hearing it a lot over the next few years. He first came to American attention via his Oscar-nominated Mideast mystery “Incendies.” In 2013, he made his first English-language films — “Enemy,” a bizarre identity drama with Jake Gyllenhaal, and “Prisoners,” a kidnapping thriller starring Hugh Jackman, which I thought one of the very best films of that year. In “Prisoners,” Villeneuve put the audience through the wringer with the tension he creates, a tension I haven’t seen in any other film since. Until I saw “Sicario.”
The director takes the very smart script by actor Taylor Sheridan (“Sons of Anarchy”) and keeps the audience as off-balance as he can. And the score by Jóhann Jóhannsson, who was Oscar-nominated last year for “The Theory of Everything,” should return him to the Oscars once more. His use of bass notes sound like they come from the center of the earth and contribute mightily to the film’s unsettled moods.
Villeneuve’s key collaborator, however, is cinematographer Roger Deakins, a 12-time Oscar nominee and one of the very best in the world. If his Oscar-nominated work on “Prisoners” brilliantly captured the dark, cold and rainy atmosphere around Thanksgiving, his palette here emphasizes earth tones, all bright and arid. He has created some unforgettable images, highlighted by a bravura sequence in an underground tunnel that uses three distinctive camera techniques that can suggest that you’re losing your bearings. Brilliant work.
The acting across the board is first-rate. Josh Brolin completely inhabits his flip-flop-clad Graver, who manages to keep you guessing just which side he’s on. And Benicio del Toro as Alejandro, who is revealed to be the film’s sicario (or hitman), oozes menace, but when he reveals his motivations, del Toro has the chops to make the audience care.
But “Sicario” wouldn’t work without the strong central performance of Emily Blunt as Kate. She plays Kate as an idealist who sees the war on drugs as a black-and-white issue and becomes deeply disillusioned when she realizes that those most effective in fighting the war are those who see life in various shades of grey. (I can’t give you an exact number.) Most often seen in lighter fare (“The Devil Wears Prada,” “Into the Woods”), Blunt scores a career best here and gives “Sicario” its beating heart.
Besides being a first-rate thriller, “Sicario” presents a very dark view of the war on drugs — that it can’t be won, that it can only be managed and controlled, and it’s key to be the one who manages it. That message is as chilling as any plot twist in the story.
“Sicario” is one of the very best films of the year.
GRADE: A-
