Blunt Force Trauma

Rating: 8/10 (24 September 2015)

SICARIO (2015) *** Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, Benicio Del Toro, Victor Garber, Jon Bernthal, Daniel Kaluuya, Jeffrey Donovan, Raoul Trujillo, Julio Cedillo. Absorbing yet gradually paced look at the ongoing war on drugs at the US/Mexican border where Blunt's gung-ho yet continually over-her-head/need-to-know mission with an elite government task force has her sinking into a moral quagmire of Just What The Hell Is Going On Here paranoia and conceit. Brolin provides some weathered charm as her blind-leading-the-blind comrade-in-arms while Del Toro gives his best performance since winning his Oscar as a varying shades of grey op whose still-waters-run-deep demeanor has a chilling effect. While the screenplay by Taylor Sheridan enters Michael Mann territory of on-the-job stresses involving life and death with enough ballast, director Denis Villeneuve's somewhat glacial pacing does tax the nerves when it's not nerve-shredding with its peppering of well-executed violence.