Very thrilling

Rating: 10/10 (19 October 2015)

An FBI team raids a house in Arizona. They expect some type of hostage situation instead find more than 40 bodies stashed in the walls. When an agent opens a hatch in the ground he's blown to pieces by a bomb.
When the two main agents in charge, Macer and Wayne (played by two Brits because, why bother hiring an American girl and an African-American when you can hire two Brits to play Americans?!? Just what sick Hollywood agenda is this supposed to satisfy?), are debriefed, it turns into a job interview for the girl, Macer. Some cool and casual but shady government character wants her on his anti-drug taskforce. The girl agrees not knowing what she's getting herself into.
She's dropped off at an airport where she gets on a private plane. Aside from the guy, Graver, there's an even shadier Latin guy whose name we don't learn for a while. He has some type of flashbacks.
They arrive in El Paso where she thinks the operation will take place. Instead there are sheriffs, marshalls, SEALs, and other operatives. The mission instead will be to drive to Juarez and grab a guy who is in custody there. Off they go and pick up the guy, a relative of the biggest drug lord. As they return over the bottled-up border bridge they spot some suspicious guys and decide to shot these guys up in the middle of the bridge. Macer is outraged, even though she, too, had to kill a guy. And she learns that Graver used her all along for his purposes.
The shady Latin guy gets to have the final off-the books interview with the bad guy. Now the team plans a double operation, to go after the bad guy's finances by interrupting some of his deposits in the US. This will cause him to call his brother to Mexico. They plan on using him to find where the main guy is hiding and plan a distraction by attacking one of the smuggling tunnels. Things go well, and Mercer learns that the Latin guy has her back. They time the tunnel operation to coincide with the brother's trip across the border. During the operation Mercer learns that the shady Latin guy is again doing violent things off the book.
****Spoilers follow****
She's outraged and threatens Graver who decides to come clean. The Latin guy is actually Colombian. The drug lord had his wife beheaded and his daughter burn to death in acid. He's going after him and in a way the CIA is facilitating this, it's a win-win situation.
Sicario is among my favorite thrillers, right there with Heat and Spartan. It in a way captures the excitement of those two movies and as with them the fantastic music highlights the tension. Aside from the two pointless Brits, casting is strong. Del Toro, even though he doesn't get to say much steals the show as the menacing yet humane...operative/adviser/whatever his character is. Brolin does a solid job and it's great to see Jeffrey Donovan, basically as Michael Westen back in the fold.
While for a good time it seems this movie is just about presenting a couple of tense operations, eventually a plot develops and ideas are provided. The more provocative idea is that the US government preferred the days when Escobar's cartel was the sole drug organization around the world. Instead now it's all chaos and all it can hope for is a bit of order. The far less original idea is this standard but unrealistic picture of the FBI as the law-abiding entity while the CIA is all full of rogue and dark operatives. Otherwise Sicario is a terrific thriller.