Good, possibly great, but certainly not for the reasons you think

Rating: 7/10 (29 January 2016)

The cinematography was outstanding and the performances were great, but I did not like this film, yet I was compelled to give it a favorable rating. Either it was a cleverly devised piece of film work or an accidental genius, I do not know. I can't remember the last time I felt so conflicted about a film.
The main character Kate Macer is played by Emily Blunt; she was dreadful, but not because of her acting, because of the inherent nature of the character. I can't imagine any feminist liking this movie at all. Not only is she kept in the dark by her male counterparts, but she is used, for their progressive purposes to do what she inherently is, a woman out of her league. At every turn of the movie she is is faced with insubordination by men; she is out matched and manhandled in physical confrontation by men and stuck trying to decide how she feels or what she should do instead of reacting to her environment using FBI trained field instincts - instead of shooting first and asking questions later. Take what you want from that. In short, she came off very weak. I am not an expert on FBI anti-drug tactics or what demographics comprise the elite agents who deal with this kind of warfare.
Who's story is this? The direction of film changes to focus more on Benicio Del Toro who plays Alejandro - a man seeking revenge, but also in some kind of way helping the FBI tracking down a drug kingpin. The focus subtly shifts, yet the character development of Alejandro is never fully revealed, it is merely insinuated through Josh Brolin who plays Matt Graver and the audience is left watching the warpath reactions of Alejandro - who is the type of person who shoots first and ask questions later.
This film, I feel is Oscar worthy, yet I really felt off put by who I thought the protagonist was - and I came to that assessment by how much screen time that character got - meaning Kate Macer received the most screen time. Because of this and the ending of the film, I felt truly conflicted, which is great that a film could garner this result - however, as I've stated before I did not like the main character.
I will probably watch it again, because I feel like this is a film where you can't get all the innuendos and all the motives in one watching, however I will not be adding it to my collection.
Overall I advise that movie fans watch this movie because it is certainly not a cookie cutter approach and invokes deeper introspection when viewing the film in it's entirety.