Sicario is a kind of neo-realistic take on what it might be like to be an everywoman trying to work in impossible situations
Sicario means ‘hitman’ in Colombia, a grim name for a grim film that deals with all the shades of grey that seem to be the default setting of trickier political issues in life, be they immigration, gender politics, and in this case, the condoning of extreme violence within the morally murky world of drug smuggling in the Americas.
Sicario detaches from the usual male oriented antics that are usually associated with films about busting shadowy druglords by casting the wonderful Emily Blunt as Kate Macer, an FBI agent working in Arizona.
Focused, and thoroughly competent as the leader of her unit, Blunt as Macer is a captivating, fully dimensional human being who refuses to engage in the high strung antics of her other male peers. Her partnership with the stoic, humourous Reggie Wayne (played with wry wit by Daniel Kaluuya), is the only balanced human relationship in the topsy-turvy world of law enforcement portrayed in the film.
Josh Brolin plays shady CIA agent Matt Graver, a man with nebulous morals which are compounded by his partnership with Alejandro Gillick (Benicio de Toro), an enigmatic Colombian whose intentions are unclear even while his actions induce chills along the spine.
As Graver and Gillick endeavour to pin down a nefarious Mexican drug lord, Macer is drawn into this world as a pawn of sorts, as she is swept into both witnessing and inadvertently partaking in acts of extreme violence (as a self –defence mechanism) – making Sicario an uncomfortable film to watch.
The filmmaker, the Canadian Denis Villeneuve – who often indulges in making films about extreme situations without ever quite justifying his motivations – is saved by the casting of Emily Blunt. Blunt is increasingly impressive in her non-histrionic ability to deal with extreme material, both violent and not, with humanity and grace. Her performance is the saving grace of what would have otherwise been an unbearably pointless film about jaded people trying to set the world right by arguing for a skewed kind of justice by way of the gun.
Sicario is being hailed as a kind of neo-realistic take on what it might be like to be an everywoman trying to work in impossible situations. Personally, I cringe at this explanation, particularly when the ending leaves you with a poetic sense of absolutely nothing – a classic Villeneuve indulgence that doesn’t seem to have evolved since his interminable, yet lauded previous films such as Incendies (2011), another excruciating work that leaves you utterly cold.