Overrated & Underwritten

Rating: Null/10 (5 January 2016)

"Sicario" is a violent, unpleasant, hopelessly confused action picture caught in between a standard revenge drama and a socially relevant film.
The main problem is the lack of sympathetic characters, especially the main role of FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt). Throughout the film, Blunt's character is lost in the vicious world of illegal government ops led by the cocky CIA operative Matt Graver (Josh Brolin). As with so many events in American history of the past half century, covert operations are rationalized by the dictum "the ends justify the means." If the filmmakers wanted to raise awareness of such vital issues as immigration and drug wars, they did not succeed.
Nearly all of the characters were one-dimensional in what would typically be the norm for a made-for-television movie. The most interesting role is that of a violent revenge-driven mercenary named Alejandro (Benicio del Toro). SPOILER ALERT FOLLOWS: In the penultimate scene of the film, Kate is ordered at gunpoint by Alejandro to sign a document stipulating that all of the covert activities she has witnessed were legal. Kate refuses to sign. In this crucial moment of the film, how many viewers could really say that they cared whether or not Kate Macer signed that document?