Even better than Prisoners!

Rating: 8/10 (16 October 2015)

So after liking Black Mass my bias for crime films continues further here, I really liked Sicario, it was well directed, acted and the cinematography was beautiful. At the heart of Sciario, the plot is quite simple, a talented FBI rookie- Kate (Emily Blunt) gets called up to a higher up narcotics unit who claim that their fight makes a difference and if she wants to make a difference and start dealing with higher level cartel mafia they were the only unit which can help her out. The said unit led by Graver (Josh Borlin) has hired a special contractor Alejandro Gillick (Benecio Del Toro) of mysterious origins who is a smooth multilingual talker and a ruthless killer all rolled into one; basically James Bond without all the womanizing and silliness. Gillick and Graver take liberties during their missions and don't go about their business by the books in fact sometimes they seem bigger criminals than the drug cartel they fight against. Kate is an idealist and this disturbs her, but at the same time she also wants to make a difference, this theme is the meat and potatoes of the movie. I personally found this theme a lot more relatable than Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners' "I will fall to any depths for my child" theme because I am not a parent and but still old enough to realize that how many times I wish I could have done something which really mattered to the society I live in. Everyone's great here, Emily Blunt and Josh Brolin perform well but the man who is the spirit of this movie and it's namesake is the Sciario (meaning The Hit-man) himself- Benecio Del Toro, we find the Academy Award winner here in top form, I was reminded of the fact how physically imposing he was when he towered above Josh Brolin (who is a big guy himself); coupled with the fact he was so intimidating, this was a great casting choice and I hope to see a nomination for Del Toro in Best Supporting Actor category.
Some things I wish the film did better was if it dealt with the details, the nitty gritties which I enjoyed in Black Mass, what's the hierarchy of the cartel? How is the business carried out? How is the load distributed? Answers to these questions are lacking in this movie and it is details like this which truly elevate crime films and make them realistic. The ending was also a little too Gung-Ho for my liking, I also liked the fact while this film had better editing than Prisoners, the film still had some "fat" and could have been trimmed by fifteen minutes or so. Lastly, I am glad that this movie had a very unique well shot encounter between the Cartel and Narcotics unit it was in an underground tunnel of sorts and the shots alternated between night vision and normal vision while ominous music played in the background, good stuff, I like that Villeneuve has made this more visually appealing than his previous works.