Bullet Points: Sicario

Despite hearing nothing but rave reviews about it, 2015’s Sicario is a movie that had been in watchlist purgatory for me for more than a year.

When I finally sat down and experienced the film, I understood why people were raving about the Denis Villeneuve directed Sicario.

Notice I say experienced the film and not watched the film because Sicario is an experience. The movie features top notch writing, high caliber performances by Josh Brolin, Emily Blunt and Benicio Del Toro and a soundtrack that you can actually feel in your bones.

For those of you who have not had the opportunity to experience Sicario this review does not contain any major spoilers about the plot, but provides a glimpse at why I felt this is one of the best movies that has been released in the past decade…

• House of Horrors: Some movies start off slow, but Sicario is not one of those movies. The opening scene of the film is the equivalent of someone grabbing you by the shoulders and shaking you. You can’t help but to pay attention as the FBI drives a truck INTO a house in a quiet suburb of Phoenix. Among the FBI agents as part of this raid are Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) and her partner Reggie Wayne (Daniel Kaluuya). After the inhabitants of the house are neutralized a startling discovery is made behind the freshly hung drywall… there are dozens of decomposing corpses in the house! If that was not an explosive enough start, two agents are blown to kingdom come when they come across a bomb inside a tool shed. This was shock and awe at its finest. The visuals in this scene were unforgettable from the horror of the corpses, to some of the agents puking their guts out, to the massive explosion in the backyard of a suburban neighborhood in the United States of America. A few minutes in and I was hooked…

• In Too Deep: After the raid, Kate Macer is recruited by Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) to be a part of a government task force to help deliver a major blow in the ongoing war on drugs that is being waged along the United States and Mexico border. The task force is made up of members from the Department of Defense, U.S. Marshal Service, Army Special Forces and a mysterious character named Alejandro (more on him in a bit). Fired up by what she saw at the house and wanting to take down the bastards responsible for killing some of her co-workers, Macer agrees to the assignment but soon finds out the task force is not necessarily playing by the rules and instead are constantly blurring the line between what is right and what is legal. Kate’s baptism by fire comes when she rides along as the task force transports a high ranking member of the drug cartel from a prison in Juarez back to the United States. This plays out in an intense border crossing scene many consider the best scene in the entire film (including our very own Matt Spector). The Kate Macer character is the type of character that the audience can easily relate too as we see the horrifying reality of the war on drugs through her eyes. I also loved the contrast between the in over her head Kate Macer and the super confident Matt Graver.

• International Man of Mystery: The most intriguing character in the entire movie has to be Benicio Del Toro’s Alejandro. There is an air of mystery that surrounds the Alejandro character from the first time we see him until his final appearance in the film. It felt like Kate Macer spends most of the movie trying to figure out how and why Alejandro was a part of the team, kind of like how I am still trying to figure out why Benicio Del Toro was in The Last Jedi but in a much more positive way.  We do get some of Alejandro’s backstory as the movie goes on, most importantly the origin of his personal animosity with the Mexican cartels that control the trafficking of illegal narcotics. In this man’s opinion, Alejandro’s past and how it came to be that he found himself working with the Department of Defense would make for one hell of a prequel.

As I alluded to in my intro, Sicario gets high marks across the board. Denis Villeneuve weaves the action scenes into a suspenseful story that had me guessing what would happen next the entire time. The tone of the movie reminded me a lot of the critically acclaimed series, Breaking Bad. But unlike Breaking Bad, we get the perspective of law enforcement and the extremes they are willing go to to take down the lawless Mexican drug cartels.

My expectations were high when I went into Sicario since I had only heard good things. But even with the high expectations I felt that Sicario over delivered… now in an attempt to over deliver to you, here are some Bonus Bullet Points…

• The Power of Music: Jóhann Jóhannsson provided the soundtrack to Sicario. Jóhannsson’s music added an extra layer of tension and as a viewer helped suck me in to the experience. I could not help but think the inclusion of the pounding bass was meant to mimic the pounding heart of Kate Macer. Sadly the talented Jóhann Jóhannsson passed away on February 9, 2018. He was only 48 years old.
• The Little Things: Sicario was a reality based action thriller and the inclusion of a CNN news report added to that reality.
• Familiar Face: There was a familiar face amongst the members of the government task force in the form of Jeffrey Donovan. Donovan would be most known to action entertainment fans from his work as Michael Westen on the spy series Burn Notice.
• Definition: Sicario is the term for hitman in Mexico.
• Sicario 2: A sequel to Sicario has been completed with Josh Brolin, Benicio Del Toro and Jeffrey Donovan reprising their roles.