Daniel Ortiz Rants on: Sacario

Rating: 9/10 (2 October 2015)

I saw the preview for this movie a couple of months ago, and it seemed interesting enough for me to wait for it to come out on video. It gave me the illusion of a modern day Traffic. After seeing a couple of reviews online from some critics that I usually trust to give valid opinions, and calling this a must-see, I thought I'd give it a shot. Also coming fresh off of watching Narcos on Netflix, my Latin drug dealers appetite was still there.
So first and foremost, I have to say this movie did an excellent, and I mean excellent job of putting you in suspense from the beginning and keeping you there until the end. We were able to see this world open up through the untainted eyes of FBI agent Kate Macer played by Emily Blunt. As the protagonist of the film, she was just as much in the dark about what was going on as we were. Every time I found myself asking, 'What the hell is going on?', you can see that she was wondering that too, and when the time was right those questions were answered; but with every question answered we were taken deeper into a really ugly world where the bad guy, good guy line is completely blurred.
I loved the fact that this movie had multiple layers, and each layer that we delve into uncovered something surprisingly dark and unexpected. All three of the main characters were also layered and the more you learned about them, the more you understood their characters and what they really stood for.
The cinematography was exceptional. The beautiful sky's and dark landscapes of Arizona, the sheer scale of the small SUV's entering into the massive, flat and impoverished city of Juarez. Each large landscape scene was used to give the viewer a true understanding of the environment that the officials were about to encounter and it held no bars.
As mentioned before, I was on the edge of my seat the entire movie and the director understood how to use each scene to keep tension throughout the film. There was one part where I thought it was a filler scene and seemed out of place, but then it ties that filler to be just as important and puts us back in that bubble of tension.
The Score! Holy Crap, THE SCORE! The music in this film created a sense of dread in the viewer whenever there was an infiltration of extraction of some sort. JÃ³hann JÃ³hannsson needs to win an award somewhere in the near future for how awesome this score was.
Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin were absolutely amazing in this movie. Both had polar opposite personalities but knew were in tune idealistically on the goal of their mission.
Overall Grade: A
I've scrolled through all the movies I've reviewed and this is the first movie I gave a solid A to. I couldn't find much flawed about this movie. The pacing of the film was amazing, the the movie was beautifully shot, the actors all put on great performances, THE SCORE was phenomenal, and the surprises were never expected. I wanted to clap at the end of this movie, but no one else did so I held it in; but this film is definitely a must see. Check out more of my reviews Daniel Ortiz Rants on wordpress