So Close, but No Cigar

Rating: 9/10 (14 March 2020)

I'm watching Sicario now for the umpteenth time as I'm on lock-down due to the coronavirus (all bars are closed and football is postponed-what do you do with yourself in Spain without these options?). I haven't reviewed it before so that motivates me to watch it again carefully. This was almost an excellent film. It's about 80% excellent, and very close to one of the best in this genre. One of the obstacles keeping it from being excellent was Emily Blunt and her character, equal parts of both.
What the film does well, it does very well. It starts off with a real bang. The opening minutes a very compelling, and then the story segues into a complicated and interesting story. The action is soon ramped up to the highest level with the scene crossing into Mexico, a scene filled with foreboding and tension until the climax.
"Why are we going?"
"Because CIA can't operate within U.S. borders without a domestic agency attached."
This brief exchange is why the movie is good but falls short of great. Had her character not been the protagonist, had some other person been picked for this honor, the film would have been outstanding. The director was a little too intent on pointing out the moral ambiguities in the drug war and ended up erroring on the side of confusing and boring.
Instead of highlighting Emily Blunt's character, imagine a lot more time devoted to that of Benicio del Toro. Alejandro had so much more at stake in this war than she. I would have loved to see his back story, the loss of his family. This was something that also could have been covered in the dreadful sequel to this film.