Slightly Above Average Revenge Film

Rating: 7/10 (16 January 2016)

Sicario follows an idealistic agent named Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), who joins the team of a CIA Special Activities Division undercover officer named Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), and his partner Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro). Macer, her partner Reggie (Daniel Kaluuya), and the team they tagged along with attempt to track down numerous drug cartel leaders and have them arrested.
There are many positive aspects of this film that deserve to be pointed out, such as the relatively strong cinematography and score. The direction out of Denis Villeneuve, especially compared to his previous film, Prisoners, is very average in Sicario. Benicio del Toro delivers one of his strongest acting performances in years, even though his character, Alejandro, does not have much dialogue in the final cut of the film (originally his character had more, but most of his lines were cut due to Villeneuve's artistic vision.) Josh Brolin does a fine job, and so does Emily Blunt throughout the film. The strongest aspects of the film are probably the cinematography and the acting performances. The story however, was a little slow, with not enough dialogue to get an in-depth description about some of the characters, especially the character of Reggie. This was not much of a surprise, however, considering director Villeneuve's preference of more character movement and action, rather than long dialogue sequences. Later in the film (spoilers) we learn of Alejandro Gillick's true intentions, tracking down and killing the man who murdered his wife and daughter. This was a slight disappointment, considering that this was only a revenge film in disguise for a good portion of the film. In conclusion, not bad by any means, but surely many people expected more from it plot-wise, below are the scores:
Direction: 7/10, Cinematography: 8/10, Acting: 9/10, Music: 8/10, Screenplay: 6/10
Overall: 7/10