A B-movie in A-movie dress

Rating: 6/10 (21 March 2020)

Featuring tough-as-nails C.I.A. agents freelancing in the drugs trade, 'Sicaro' follows a fairly well-worn path. Nonetheless, I quite enjoyed it's first half, with its disorienting but realistic feel. Further on, however, the plot goes downhill, starting with a hook-up that goes implausibly wrong, and ending with a deeply unconvincing conclusion. In between, the movie swaps protagonists, and abandons Emily Blunt's heroine to show the vigilante-style antics of another character, even though until this point the central mystery of the film was that she (but also us, the viewers) didn't know what to make of him. The film's final scene affects to show real concern for those who live in northern Mexico under the rule of the drugs barons; unfortunately, there's a B-movie not too far behind this superficially serious portrait of their reign.