I don't really want to think about it, but maybe we do need some of that "diversity" stuff

Rating: 5/10 (20 February 2020)

I went into "Sicario" with really high expectations and left feeling quite disappointed. Perhaps this movie has just aged really rapidly, as movies often do.
I won't be writing any spoilers, but we all know that this film is based on the on-going "Great Mexican-American Drug War". Emily Blunt plays an FBI agent and the other Americans are a bunch of shady operatives. I'm an aging (God it hurts to admit that) American male and naturally drawn to action movies, although they're the minority of films I watch.
This film starts off under a steady rain of testosterone, which keeps building steadily throughout the movie, until it's a straight-up Category 5 hurricane by the end. Basically, it's about hard men in a hard world. Playing on that theme, I expect that copies this movie are being peddled in the back of men's magazines alongside "pheromones" and "natural Viagra". Way before it ended, I was overdosing. (Maybe I'm just too virile as it is and simply couldn't take any more hits, at least not without an opportunity to work it out of my system winning the Tour de France or becoming a home run king.) At least "Mission Impossible" flicks aren't intended to be serious commentaries on society.
Emily Blunt's character was a joke. I'm not that big a guy and not in the best shape of my life, but unless she's some kind of black belt, I'd rip her limb-from-limb. Playing an up-and-coming, hard-core, door-breaking, FBI agent just seemed ridiculous and there was no way to suspend disbelief on this matter. Mostly she came across as a whiny, 90 pound, teenage girl. This isn't misogyny, only the hurtful truth. Total miscasting.
Still, this film's testosterone overload makes a pretty good case for all those annoying diversity activists (should have more particularly mentioned that I'm a white male--the worst kind). Quite reasonably, most of us probably don't want the anti-heroes of "Sicario" solving the world's problems. I'm pretty certain that these "Ultimate Men" could do no better than another "Ultimate Solution", a bit of history best not repeated. Guys like these are the "Typhoid Marys" of PTSD. It's like when you elect a psychopath as President--the President's just fine, it's everybody else who suffers. I never thought that I'd ever find myself using that abhorrent, simple-minded, put-down "toxic" masculinity, but I'd consider making an exception here. Even the bits of supposed nuance in this film hit you over the head like a 20 pound sledge hammer.
In the end, I'm still giving "Sicario" 5 stars, because, at least if you're a guy, it'll almost certainly hold you attention all the way to the end. Shamefully, it did for me. Also it's a very slick production. I remain personally very disappointed though, since so many reviews implied that the plot had depth. I suppose if you're extremely unfortunate you can drown in a wading pool, but it's still not the deep end, even if you can't swim and it's really windy.