Movie Review: Sicario

Heart of Darkness, eat your, well, heart out. Sicario is an enthralling journey into the ethically-murky waters of the drug war, featuring another – yes, another - sterling performance by Emily Blunt.

Director Denis Villeneuve loves posing irresistible questions at the start of his pictures, from Oscar nominee Incendies, to Jake Gyllenhaal double feature Prisoners and Enemy, to his latest big-screen bummer, Sicario.

They range from the reasonable (“What’s the terrible secret my mother hid her whole life?”) to the nightmarish (“Who has taken my child?”) to the absurd (“Why do I have a doppelganger?”).

The result is always the same. The more our curious protagonists find, the more of themselves they lose.

(Though, some would say that’s more satisfying than the answer we get to the question at the beginning of every new M. Night Shyamalan film: “Is he good again? Not yet? Never mind.”)

So it goes for Sicario’s haunted hero Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), an FBI agent operating the most Sisyphean task force in Arizona: attempting to recover those who’ve been kidnapped by the Mexican drug cartel.

In the harrowing opening scene, Kate leads an operation to recover two hostages from a desolate house, only to find 42 bagged, bloodied and no-longer breathing bodies hidden inside. Those hostages aren’t among the deceased. They’re never mentioned again. They’ll never be discovered.

(The grisly tricks of the real-life cartel’s trade are more inventive and gut-churning than any Hollywood hack could imagine; screenwriter Taylor Sheridan, in his feature debut, mustn’t have had to Google hard for inspiration.)

Chilled by the discovery, Kate is desperate to know what kind of person sits at the tippy top of such a bloodthirsty network, and what it takes to remove them from power. She eventually gets answers; they’re not the kind she’s looking for.

Convinced by her bosses that change can only be enacted on the other side of the border, Kate volunteers for a trip to Mexico, under the wing of a flip-flop wearing CIA spook refered to, simply, as Matt (Josh Brolin). There, she’s told, she’ll see how the sausage is made and learn how one really wins the war on drugs. Much to her horror, it turns out the methods deployed by Americans for the greater good are just as despicable. If the criminal underbelly of Mexico doesn’t kill Kate, her insistence on sticking to the rulebook just might.

(Is it a coincidence Sicario, named after the Mexican word for ‘hitman’, brings to mind the title Serpico, Sidney Lumet’s parable about a good cop near-fatally shot for threatening his corrupt colleagues?)

Kate’s paired with an enigmatic gent of mysterious origins and obscured affiliations on this excursion. His name is Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro, back from the wilderness), and he’s far less talkative than her regular partner, Reggie (Daniel Kaluuya, a breath of fresh air in an otherwise suffocating movie).

Matt reckons young Reggie is too green for a trip to Juárez. It doesn’t help that Reggie has also sat for the bar. “No lawyers,” Matt insists early on; an ominous hint at what Kate might witness on this trans-national mission. (Jóhann Jóhannsson’s menacing, industrial score, provides the assist.)

Villeneuve is uncannily gifted at sending stones to the pits of our stomachs. As such, Sicario is home to some of the year’s most craftily composed white-knuckle sequence; one taking place on the U.S./Mexico border crossing is especially stressful. However, don’t mistake this for an action spectacular. It’s thoughtful, contemplative, enigmatic… and rather beautiful, as you’d expect with cinematographer Roger Deakins behind the lens. What it’s not is friendly Friday night fare; the kind of thing you can just look at as an excuse to eat popcorn. I can’t imagine many having an appetite while watching Sicario.

The dread builds steadily over its two hours, especially as Kate’s stubborn insistence on following protocol ends up being the biggest threat to her survival. There is no scene in which she seems entirely safe. Usually, it’s when she’s opposite colleagues.

In many ways, Sicario is a workplace drama, where the discrimination is ingrained and the harassment – even towards someone as strong and self-assured as Kate – is inescapable.

Throughout, she’s locked out of rooms where male superiors are discussing her career, or kept in the dark by Matt and Alejandro as to what’s really going on. Most distressingly, she’s physically overpowered by men on at least three occasions.

Still, a film need not make its heroine impossibly and unrealistically empowered to be feminist. You want Kate to have her triumphant moment. It’s a testament to Blunt - quietly and steadily becoming our best working actress – that she can maintain her character’s steely drive and determination while still being broken down by institutionalised sexism and misogyny (not to mention, you know, all the murders).

The challenging and compelling Sicario is ultimately about fighting futile fights; not just to end the drug scourge, but for morality and equality as well.

Scruples. Survival. Success. Our "heroes" can pick any two.

4.5/5

In cinemas September 24. Rated MA15+ for strong themes and violence.