Liked it, didn't love it.

Rating: 7/10 (27 September 2015)

Sicario tells the story of an FBI agent (Emily Blunt) asked to cooperate with the CIA to take down a Mexican drug cartel.
This is Benicio Del Toro's best performance since Traffic which is no small praise. Josh Brolin delivers a good performance as well. I'm usually a fan of Emily Blunt, but I found her profoundly okay in this role. She doesn't bring anything personal to this character. She was never bad, but you could replace her with any other actress without changing much to the movie.
Denis Villeneuve is known for his dark, bleak tone and Sicario is no exception. The movie has very graphic violence, sometimes to its detriment. You see countless burnt, decapitated, amputated, tortured bodies of Mexican men without any attempt to humanize any victim of those drug cartels; who were they? why did they die? who cares? Not Denis Villeneuve apparently. It's a shame because it makes the movie feel exploitative and dehumanizing which probably wasn't Villeneuve's intention.
The story doesn't pull any punches, like Blunt's character, you feel powerless when confronted with the violence and the scale of the drug cartels. According to Sicario, Mexicans are unable to solve their own problems, Americans make everything even worse and you can't help but feel that this is a doomed cause.
This movie has undeniable qualities: Benicio Del Terro's performance is incredible, Deakins should get an Oscar for cinematography and Denis Villeneuve knows how to shoot action and build tension. Sadly, by the end of the movie, I wished I had watched the real story of the men and women who reduced Mexico's murder rate by 25% in the last three years, a fact Denis Villeneuve seems to ignore.