Sicario | Little White Lies

Sicario

08 Oct 2015 / Released: 08 Oct 2015

Three armed military personnel in combat gear standing in the dark.
Three armed military personnel in combat gear standing in the dark.
3

Anticipation.

The latest from almost-but-not-quite man, Denis Villeneuve.

4

Enjoyment.

A heady shot of technical pyrotechnics, a triumph of aesthetics over politics.

3

In Retrospect.

A visceral, in-the-moment ride-along more than a movie to chew over for any length of time.

Emi­ly Blunt gets a tough les­son in Mex­i­can-US pol­i­tics in this vis­cer­al drugs war dra­ma from Denis Villeneuve.

Prison­ers, Denis Villeneuve’s first col­lab­o­ra­tion with the great DoP Roger Deakins, showed the Que­be­cois direc­tor could elic­it sin­is­ter por­tent from just about any sce­nario with­out demon­strat­ing any judg­ment about whether it was worth film­ing in the first place.

Sicario, which reteams Vil­leneuve and Deakins, ben­e­fits immense­ly from not slid­ing into snakes-and-Satanists silli­ness, and is accord­ing­ly excru­ci­at­ing­ly sus­pense­ful for most of its run­ning time. As recent­ly depict­ed in Ger­ar­do Naranjo’s Miss Bala, Amat Escalante’s Heli and Matthew Heineman’s Car­tel Land, the dis­as­trous War on Drugs is under­stood pri­mar­i­ly as a nev­er-end­ing series of atroc­i­ties, most com­mit­ted by implaca­bly bru­tal Mex­i­can cartels.

What this pre­sen­ta­tion – with its empha­sis on bod­ies hang­ing from bridges, bor­der­land shootouts and oth­er rou­tine erup­tions of extreme vio­lence – leaves out is any kind of ques­tion as to why this is hap­pen­ing in the first place. It’s not as wide­ly under­stood as it should be that the unwinnable war on drugs is a ter­rif­i­cal­ly effec­tive way of enrich­ing America’s pri­vate pris­ons, but not good for much else; a film on the drug wars that shies away from any larg­er exam­i­na­tion of the mon­strous sys­tem behind it is a rather point­less thing.

Sicario doesn’t have much to con­tribute to polit­i­cal dia­logue besides the sen­ti­ment, ʻYou prob­a­bly shouldn’t trust any­one in the CIA,’ which should already be stag­ger­ing­ly obvi­ous. This large ide­o­log­i­cal caveat aside, the film is relent­less­ly effec­tive at keep­ing view­er nerves frayed; the omi­nous slow dol­lies, zooms, close-ups and oth­er acts of direc­to­r­i­al aggres­sion slathered over Pris­on­ers work much bet­ter with halfway cred­i­ble mate­r­i­al. The set­up is very sim­ple: FBI agent Kate (Emi­ly Blunt) is recruit­ed to join the ambigu­ous­ly cre­den­tialed gov­ern­ment agent Matt (Josh Brolin) in a raid on a major drug lord. What is pre­sent­ed as a sim­ple action pre­dictably leads to dark­er covert ops of dubi­ous legal­i­ty, off­site tor­ture and all. Essen­tial­ly a pas­sive char­ac­ter, Kate acts as a view­er sur­ro­gate: the only choice she’s giv­en is to remove her­self from the sit­u­a­tion, but she’s too curi­ous to tear her­self away.

With expert sup­port from Brolin and a ful­ly-engaged Beni­cio Del Toro as anoth­er mys­te­ri­ous­ly cre­den­tialed man, Sicario main­tains a strong sense of men­ace in the unlike­li­est set­tings: even a sim­ple shot of Blunt tak­ing a show­er alone in her apart­ment con­jures a slash­er movie’s worth of pent-up dread. A shoot-out in the crowd­ed lanes at the bor­der cross­ing makes expert use of chang­ing traf­fic between pro­tag­o­nists and poten­tial threat, the mov­ing cars con­stant­ly reset­ting where gun­fire might come from to ratch­et the tension.

The finale may well out­do Kathryn Bigelow’s impres­sive­ly low-light work in Zero Dark Thir­ty, alter­nate­ly shoot­ing a night raid through the equal­ly sick­ly colour tones of green nightvi­sion and red heat-seek­ing ther­mal glass­es. Even qui­eter moments aren’t immune from jolts: a shot of Del Toro sleep­ing on a plane slow­ly amps up a sub­lim­i­nal tre­ble whine that grows into a sound rem­i­nis­cent of scream­ing chil­dren, a nice­ly Shin­ing-esque moment. But Johann Johansson’s ter­rif­i­cal­ly pum­melling score rep­re­sents the film’s MO bet­ter: bring on the pound­ing tym­pa­ni, max­imise vis­cer­al thrills and don’t stop to think.

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