Unpleasant truths compensated by beautiful cinematography...

Rating: 9/10 (24 February 2016)

"Sicario" leaves you with bitter feelings; it's like too real for its own good. You can't help but look at the world as an ugly, violent and merciless place where only wolves can survive and sheep only pray for never crossing their paths. That the heroine spends most of the time totally powerless and clueless about what's going around her is very revealing of "Sicario"'s message: there's no place for little hearts when it comes to fight drugs, money and corruption.
Emily Blunt plays Kate, an FBI agent joining a CIA unit, lead by undercover officer Matt, played by Josh Brolin, for a mission in the Mexican borders. The target is a drug cartel overlord, indirectly responsible for the deaths of two SWAT agents, during a kidnapping rescue mission in Arizona, where one of his men, made a big hole on the wall with his shotgun before getting an equal treatment from Kate's rifle. The hole revealed dozens of corpses rotting inside and to viewers a foretaste of what "Sicario" is heading to. This is no playground party, the stuff that'd rather make SWAT agents go outside and throw up.
And don't get fooled by the presence of a FBI female agent, she doesn't pull a Clarice Starling or other Girl-powers trendy Hollywood tricks over the course of the film. During the operations, you can visually take her pulse, she represents our perspective, she's not a rookie, but in fact, she is. She discovers the world just as we do, and while expecting her to reach a breaking point, as the film progresses, I found extremely refreshing to have such a passive protagonist, totally frozen by tension or fear. And don't take it as machismo, but this is the kind of vulnerability that makes Kate a realistic character. Yes, there can be powerful female cops, but in a hand-to-hand fight with a guy, it's another story.
And "Sicario" story seems to convey the message that only wolves can survive by displaying the same level of savagery and mercilessness as their enemy. We live in a Darwinian world, where your survival doesn't rely on giving the other cheek, but being as strong as the predator, becoming one basically. And when wealth buys more protection, you gotta get stronger than all the levels of protections put together and this is where intervenes Alejandro, Matt's Colombian partner, magnificently portrayed by Benicio Del Toro. You can tell that Brolin had a lot of fun playing Matt, and I mean that positively, it made me enjoy his character, but it was as delightful to see Alejandro being the yin to Matt's yang, and keeping this mask of mystery for two thirds of the film, and still strike as a complex and enigmatic character, even after you get all the answers.
"Sicario" is built on a complex and intricate plot where we never know exactly the real goals and motives of everyone, who is the good cop and the bad cop anyway? And Kate, along with her partner Reggie (Daniel Kaluuya) are kept in the dark, just like we are. And we have no other choice than follow the course of the investigation, another masterpiece of documentary-like realism, reminiscent of great gripping 70's thrillers like "The French Connection" or "The Day of the Jackal". For instance, we're used to see aerial views of cities in action movies, but they never have been so significant to the plot than in "Sicario". We see the city of Juarez and we can observe it was build on a grid plan. Later, when we follow the long ballet of Police cars crossing the city, we can spot suspicious ones driving along parallel roads, and with the aerial view in mind, it all makes sense.
"Sicario" is full of long panoramic takes, that never, never feel like exercises in style, it's always part of the narrative while adding a great aesthetic touch. It's a shame Roger Deakins will probably lose the Oscar to Lubeski's work in "The Revenant", but while the cinematography in "The Revenant" was close to perfect, I think the dazzling beauty of the natural locations helped a lot, while it takes some great work to make something beautiful out of slums or the sight of random and banal urbanism. The cinematography is also useful as the plot is focused on a world of violence and ugliness (you can't get uglier than a place where women and children can be killed, hanged, tortured and so forth) so the form works like a sort of relief from a rather heavy-loaded and difficult-to-watch content.
I applaud "Sicario" for its realism and its roughness, it's like raw meat with a delicate taste. The film was directed by Denis Villeneuve, and you can tell this is the work of an outsider, not an American, it's the Canadian school of brutal realism in a beautiful and subtly perverse way. The film reminded me of another masterpiece directed by a Canadian: David Cronenberg's "A History of Violence", a story that also shows that some people have violence in their blood, and if you don't want to be the victims, you either fight or you flee as far as you can.
And this is the message of the final confrontation that I won't dare to spoil. A lesser movie would have made the heroine do something very specific with the object she was given, a lesser movie would have made her a plain heroine, but the way it ended was faithful to the spirit of the film, and within its roughness, was a 'beautiful' ending.
I'd almost feel guilty to think the movie as beautiful while it deals with such ugliness, but how about the title itself, "Sicario" is such a pleasant, charming, almost lyrical word to pronounce, we wouldn't suspect it's the Latin historical word for 'hired killer'. There's a lot of ugliness behind the world's seemingly beauty, and after "Sicario", we long for the opposite experience.