Sicario is far from being a bad movie, but it's far from being a great one

Rating: 7/10 (12 October 2015)

Sicario opens on the desert Arizona landscape. It's quiet. A platoon of armed agents tiptoe towards a small house, and moments later, the movie explodes when they burst through with a battering ram. The structure of this scene sums up the entire film; quiet and tense scenes, followed suddenly by an explosion of action and violence; rinse, lather, repeat.
Maybe the trailer was too good. Maybe the promise of Dennis Villeneuve's recent hits led to my high expectations; but unfortunately, Sicario did not meet them, and it's the exact formula above that hurts the film. After it's tense opening scene, the movie takes its time establishing its other players, like Matt Graver (played by the excellent Josh Brolin), a macho operative for an unknown agency who grants Kate Macer (played by the fierce Emily Blunt) the opportunity to find the men responsible for the deaths of other agents in the raid.
Although the movie doesn't comment directly, it shows just how unacknowledged and small a woman can feel in a world dominated by men; testosterone and male camaraderie fill the room at a debriefing full of agents with Kate being the only woman present. On the outskirts of the group, like her, is the mysterious Alejandro Gillick (played by the always-amazing Benicio Del Toro), an old friend of Matt's who may or not may be working with the same agency. However, his ultra-reserved personality gives Kate enough reason to question the mission, and she gets no answers.
This poses a big problem for the movie. The audience isn't really clued in at all as to who these agents are trying to find or why- not until the eleventh hour at least. Like Kate, the audience plods along into the unknown, frustrated with the lack of answers. Some of the action set pieces help to break up the monotony, but it doesn't help that the scenes in between crawl at a snail's pace, partially because each new location is punctuated by six or seven establishing shots each. Perhaps the editor did not want to cut some of the footage shot by the great Roger Deakins, but after one or two impressive helicopter POV's, you start to fight the urge to check the time.
It is not until a domestic brawl over an hour into the film that Sicario starts to give the audience some clues, but the movie truly reaches new heights in a scene that is a spectacle of suspense and action, reminiscent of the raid at the end of Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty just a few years ago. Through the rest of its duration, Sicario is unrelenting in action, twists, and the advancement of plot. It proves just how great Sicario could have been if it had just stayed in the editing room a little longer. The movie pulls no punches, so it's a shame that it takes way too much time to cool down between each punch, and only waiting until the end to pummel the audience into awesome submission.
The best parts about the film include:
 Roger Deakins' understated camera work  The high-intensity action sequences  Benicio Del Toro
The things that don't work in the film include:  The exposition; the film takes too long to clue us in on what is going on  The idea of the film; Sicario might leave off on a great note, but without much purpose  The editing; ten minutes or so could have easily been cut from the film and advanced the movie at a much better pace
Sicario is far from being a bad movie, but it's far from being a great one. It's performances aren't showy, and I appreciate Villeneuve's subtle direction in contrast to his earlier film Prisoners, but the movie stretches a thin amount of plot over a large amount of time, and though it packs a hell of a punch at the end, it feels a bit hollow and leaves nothing to think about. Drop the expectations and perhaps you'll be able to enjoy the film more than I did.