Brooding Emptiness

Rating: 4/10 (30 October 2015)

When the overbearing music conveys more feeling than the characters you know you have a train wreck on your hands. This is unfortunately the case with Sicario. A middling attempt at a dark/brooding drama, all the intensity in Sicario is unwound by incomplete characters. Most responsible is our female protagonist. Blunt delivers a one note performance and the note is vulnerability. Her character starts as pathetic and incompetent, the movie informs us that off screen she is was not always this way, and ends as pathetic and incompetent. What an arc. Watching her wander completely lost as she discovers her mysterious partners are not who they say they are (gasp) is just miserable. Watching her get pinned down by whatever man who happens to be in the same vicinity is insulting. Sure, many of us are tired of the generic ass kicking protagonist, but this is no better. Not that Blunt has any help. I think Del Toro is trying to impersonate someone from, No Country. He is not intimidating. Brolin is the vague sandal wearing operative. Nothing new there. The outcome of this movie is completely irrelevant (but still predictable) because I could not care what happens to any of these people. There are certainly riveting sequences and gorgeous shots, but these qualities are drowned by greater flaws. Sad, this is just an indication that some talent was completely wasted. Call it technically well-made if you want, but Sicario is a beautiful uninteresting film not about anything or anyone no matter how hard it tries.