Sicario... In Mexico it Means Hit-man

Rating: 8/10 (17 September 2015)

After getting awestruck by Denis Villeneuve's Incendies (2010), I told myself I will see anything made by him. The spellbinding Prisoners (2013) came next followed closely by the only slight misstep Enemy (2014). Villeneuve is no flash in the pan. He has a terrific knack of grabbing you by the neck and slowly wringing it until you go white hot with nerve- wrecking tension.
I think the armrest of GV@Suntec Cinema 6, Seat G10 might have been broken by me because I had practically gripped and shaken it for 2 hours straight. This is one taut, lean and mean thriller. Every shot by DP Roger Deakins holds so much indescribable menace. Even a shot of a boy rolling a ball across table had my heart in my mouth thinking that a shot would ring out and his brains would splatter all over the dining table. A slow building wide shot of a looming mountain feels like it could explode anytime. Innocuous delicate scenes become fierce, primal and shattering in scope. They are almost Hitchcockian but yet they are their own entity. Nobody does white-knuckled mounting suspense like Villeneuve.
Our heart and mind is aligned with Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) as she leads a tactical team to storm a house near the Mexican border which ends up blowing in the faces of the team, literally. She is our moral compass as she becomes continually torn in how justice is not meted out by the book. Blunt is great in the role and she continues her amazing streak as a steel-edged lady justice figure with aplomb. As much as she is our 'go-to' character in the story, it is Alejandro (Benicio del Toro) who is the spanner in the works, the winning wild card. His intriguing role outshines Blunt's in spades. When he finally becomes the namesake in the film title (in Mexico, 'sicaro' means hit-man), your jaw would have dropped to the floor. Villeneuve's superb foreshadowing is masterclass. At one early point he says to Kate: "Nothing will make sense to your American ears. You will doubt what we do. But, in the end, it will make sense." As much as these slightly condescending words are meant for Kate, they are also meant for us.
Unlike the rest of Villeneuve's oeuvres, the action scenes here are more explosive than the drama. There are a few stupendous highlights like the fugitive extraction scene and the tunnel storming sequence, which any action movie cinephile would happily deconstruct with schoolboy glee. Villeneuve is helped by Roger Deakins' superb cinematography. His deft play with light, shadows and washed out colours is itself a character in the movie. If this doesn't earn Deakins his thirteenth Oscar nomination, I won't watch any movie for one year! Coupled with Jóhann Jóhannsson's pulsating score, Sicario is one of the essential must-sees this year. Perhaps the only quibbles I have is its doggedly opaque story that requires some work from you and its lack of a higher meaning. It is still not quite the perfect marriage between pure adrenaline action and high cathartic drama that I had wished for. Maybe, the Bladerunner sequel will be the one. I await its arrival in reverence.