Directed by: Denis Villeneuve
Starring: Benicio Del Toro, Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, Victor Garber, Jon Bernthal, Jeffrey Donovan, Daniel Kaluuya
Sicario has the pieces in place, but never brings them together to create a fully satisfying thriller. When crucial information is revealed that shifts the nature of everything we thought we knew, it is too late to save the movie. There is no one really to identify with, not even the idealistic FBI agent who is recruited to take part in the ongoing drug war between the U.S. and Mexico. Her character is flatly written and while she is clearly in over her head, we do not feel much for her. Traffic (2000), which also starred Del Toro, covered this ground much more deeply and effectively. 15 years later, we have yet to see a thriller about the war on drugs that comes even close to it.
This is a war that can not be won by the U.S. no matter how much money and how many resources we throw at it. The cartels will simply outspend the competition and figure out new products and new methods of distribution. It is a violent version of Whack-A-Mole, that arcade game in which a mole pops up, you bat it down with a giant hammer, and another pops up elsewhere on the board. You gain points and you may even improve your score from time to time, but you never truly win because the game never ends.
Sicario opens with an FBI raid of a house in Chandler, Arizona. The movie says it is Chandler, Arizona, but I used to live near there and take it from me; this is not Chandler. The raid is led by agent Kate Macer (Blunt), who discovers numerous corpses with plastic bags over their heads buried in the walls. A bomb explodes as well, killing two agents. She is horrified by what she saw, but understands the true cruelty and pitiless nature of the cartels. They stop at nothing to send a message.
Kate is soon recruited by CIA agent Matt Graver (Brolin) to assist in picking up a major drug cartel figure in Juarez, Mexico and extraditing him to the United States. Matt wears flip flops to meetings and takes a perverse pleasure in hiding key information from Kate. He says they are after the people responsible for the mess in Chandler, but there is clearly more afoot. Especially when shadowy Alejandro (Del Toro) joins the mission.
Alejandro gives Kate terse pieces of advice while revealing nothing about what he does or who he is. Matt vaguely states he is an adviser, but we know there is more. When the more inevitably arrives, we are left feeling meh. We are supposed to identify the most with Kate, who is a sheep amongst wolves as Alejandro puts it. Blunt does what she can to make Kate a sympathetic figure, but I think Matt is jeopardizing the mission by dragging her along. As you see where the mission is truly going, I asked myself why they absolutely needed Kate in the first place. There is a reason, but not an explanation.
Brolin spends a lot of the movie with a smirk like the cat who ate the canary. He knows this will be one in a series of many more missions to come where the needle in the war on drugs does not move. If anything, this war keeps him employed and gives him an excuse to shoot people. Alejandro's motives are darker and more personal. His performance is efficient and he wisely does not show us all the cards. But the conclusion is simply one bad guy getting over on another. The one that loses will simply be replaced the next day and the fight will continue.
Traffic covered a lot of ground. Besides the fight between U.S. government agencies and the drug cartels, we also witness the war on drugs hitting home on a personal level for many of the characters. Sicario creates moments of genuine tension, such as when the government convoy travels to Juarez and back again, but it never adds up to anything substantial. Maybe that is the point and I am missing it. Sicario is perhaps a microcosm of how ineffective and pointless the war on drugs is. It may have purpose, but not necessarily entertainment value.
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