Review: Sicario Is A Real Thriller
- Jun 26, 2018
- 2 min read
Where once stood angry Russians, nuclear weapons and fictional Middle Eastern countries, now stands the all too real Cartels, drugs and espionage.
Idealistic FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) finds herself face to face with a particularly grisly side of the Sonora Cartel. Bodies stuffed into walls and an explosive booby trap bring her flying forward into a world she doesn't fully comprehend. Assigned to a task-force dedicated to the elimination of this particular cartel, Kate begins working alongside the strangely casual Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) and the silently dark Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro) as she slowly uncovers the truth, on both sides of the border.
From its beginning to its end, Sicario doesn't stop. Sure, it slows down, speeds up and on occasion crawls along, but it never ceases to move ahead. It's not the kind of non-stop one might expect from a John Wick or Die Hard, but a more methodical one. In a word, Sicario is glacial. That's not to say it's a slow moving lump of ice, more so that it's an unrelenting force of nature that, if ignored, will overtake and destroy anything in its way. Whether it's a shootout that feels like the most stressful fifteen minutes of your life, despite the actual shooting coming in at under thirty seconds, Roger Deakins wonderfully oppressing cinematography, or the fact that the whole film is more morally grey than a graphite gargoyle surrounded by concrete and cement, Sicario is an uneasy piece of cinema, at odds with the audience and with itself.
It doesn't hurt that it has some acting powerhouses behind it either. Blunt, Brolin and Del Toro all totally embody their characters, bringing them to life in an utterly believable way. Blunt's Macer feels particularly real as a highly skilled individual who is just out of their depth, grasping for the surface which seems perpetually further away. Brolin and Del Toro are solid in their own right, though they can, at times, feel a little more cartoony than they should.
Sicario is a cruel film. It's an ugly film, at least in its content, and it's an unforgiving film. And it's an excellent film. Other than a few, small, personal issues that don't detriment the film, there's really no reason not to watch it. If you like your action, your characters and your plots to feel real, then Sicario is what you want.
Comments