One of this year's best thrillers

Rating: 10/10 (17 September 2015)

More visceral than Steven Soderbergh's "Traffic." SICARIO is about the cost to pay in a drug war and its merciless brutality. Masterfully shot, perfectly acted. This is a film that doesn't allow you to feel comfortable. With each passing moment, it crawls its way deeper and deeper into this world where death is its only end game.
Director Denis Villenuve reteams with master cinematographer Roger Deakins to take advantage of the desert, the weather, the landscape, the terrain, and use them as silent supporting characters that also serve to express the characters' inner demons. Deakins is a multiple Oscar-nominated DP that gets better with every work and in SICARIO, you will see that he once again experiments with even richer and newer ways of shooting, whether it's the night vision first person view or the angles to capture the intensity at the border, moments before weapons are drawn, it's like enrolling in another classroom taught by Deakins but with extra curriculums to learn. The man just knows how to leave his competition behind.
To me, what I think is impressive about Emily Blunt is that she is beauty and strength all in one. She can express torment and conflicted soul so effortlessly, she plays this FBI agent, Kate Macer who does things by the book, she always holds herself and others accountable for every detail, so when she volunteers to be a part of a black ops that practically throws the book out the window, her idealistic views are put to the test. And I think Emily Blunt does a nice job of executing that. It's somewhat of a fish out of water story where Blunt's Kate Macer knows she's being used but she wants to know what she's being used for. Oscar winner, Benicio Del Toro has walked through this territory before in Steven Soderbergh's "Traffic" where he played a Tijuana police officer. In SICARIO, he plays a mysterious character, Alejandro, he's skilled, a man of a few words, soft spoken, but highly intense and has a sharp instinct. What has always been brilliant about Del Toro, in all of his works including SICARIO, is that he can say much without actually saying much at all. In the case of his character, Alejandro, there's a certain dark pain that's magnetic about him. It's all in the eyes. Oscar nominee Josh Brolin plays the leader of the team, Matt Graver, he talks way too damn much but that is also a part of his game, his game of manipulating others.
I've never been to Juarez, I've heard horrible stories about that place, and SICARIO, though it wasn't exactly filmed in Juarez, does manage to put the fear of God in audiences' heart by showing Juarez for what it is, there's no sugar coating, there's no hiding that it's one of the murder capitals of the world. It's a deeply harrowing part that will stay with you long after you've done watching the film which in and of itself wrestles with questions of morality.SICARIO means 'hit-man,' you'll come to wonder which of those three lead characters is the actual hit-man but ultimately, what SICARIO gives you is this dilemma,... if somebody could finally solve the drug cartel and drug kingpin problems for the rest of us, would you really care that they did it by killing instead of bringing the perp to justice?