Sicario 2015 Review

[Eliecer Brathwaite]

Secondviewing, no change. Having now professionally reviewed this film four times (for The Dissolve from Cannes, and then for the A.V. Club, the Nashville Scene, and the Las Vegas Weekly), I thought I had nothing left to say, especially since I made a point of addressing the most common criticisms. But since a bunch of folks are praising Adam Nayman's takedown for Reverse Shot, let me quickly address a few of his points.

Maybe I'm misreading him, but Nayman (who concurs with certified lunatic Armond White's assessment of the film as "conservative") appears to believe that Sicario endorses the actions taken by Brolin's Matt and Del Toro's Alejandro, and ultimately reveals Kate as a well-intentioned but misguided fool. "To put it nicely," that's absurd, just as it was absurd when people dogpiled The Wolf of Wall Street for allegedly celebrating Belfort's bad behavior. Reading the passage above, you'd think Nayman were describing, say, Mississippi Burning, in which Willem Dafoe's by-the-book agent finally embraces Gene Hackman's less scrupulous methodology. Or that Kate Macer were Eliot Ness in De Palma's The Untouchables, climactically demonstrating The Chicago Way by shoving Frank Nitti off a rooftop to his death when he tries to surrender. This woman initially refuses to sign a document she knows is false even with a gun pressed under her chin. That she ultimately caves is not weakness, nor is it tragic. It's simply reality.

At the bottom of this difference of opinion, I think, is a need that some people seem to have for very clear signposts of a film's moral framework. This is most evident in another comparison Nayman makes:

I don't know whether Nayman has read Cormac McCarthy's novel, or whether he's aware that the scene he describes isn't in it. McCarthy, who has zero tolerance for bullshit, has Carla Jean call heads; the coin comes up tails, and Chigurh kills her. (He still gets hit by the car afterward.) I like the Coens' adaptation a whole lot, but their decision to alter this scene, giving Carla Jean more of a backbone, was fundamentally cowardly, not humanistic. It's designed to provide the viewer with a warm, fuzzy feeling, even in the face of unspeakable evil: At least she defied him, refused to take part. We can reassure ourselves that we would do the same. It's as if 1984 had actually ended by having Winston realize his plan to secretly, mentally unleash the full force of his hatred for Big Brother one millisecond before his brains are blown out. But Orwell had something bleaker and more powerfully upsetting in mind, and so does Sicario. Its so-called ugliness is strategic.

The Metaplex is a movie review, editorial, and discussion website. We have the goal of delivering high quality content by combining in-depth film analysis with mainstream journalism, finding a healthy balance of insight and readability.

There are two reviews I can write about Sicario: Day of the Soldado. One compares the drug cartel thrill-drama to its inarguably superior predecessor. The other views it in a vacuum. One of these reviews disparages the film. The other provides a half-hopeful shrug of the shoulders.

To write this first review would be easy. With Sicario 2, director Denis Villeneuve is replaced by less-seasoned Italian director Stefano Sollima. As such, the intensity of the scenes are less felt. The drama feels more inert. Much of the procession of visual storytelling read more procedural.

Shifted too are the character perspectives, and this might be the key downfall of the film (if I were to go with the first review). Seeing the shifty, corrupt world of the drug cartels and the policing of through the eyes of characters in Sicario played by Emily Blunt and Daniel Kaluuya adds a layer of humanity to the proceedings. These characters are green to the whatever-it-takes tactics of Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), and thus they have a conscience.

But with this film, we are immediately introduced to a casual, uncommented upon nihilism. We first see, after a morbidly clever title card declares that the U.S.-Mexico border is controlled not by border control but by the Mexican cartels, a group of people illegally crossing the border. Only, they are not all Mexican citizens. One of them is a man of Middle Eastern descent (it is later intimated that he is from Yemen), and he is revealed to be an extremist with a bomb strapped to his chest.

This brutal opening is used as a gambit for the U.S. government to fight the cartels, and thus up positive PR for border security. With a terrorist attack on the border, Secretary of State James Riley (Matthew Modine) is given the leeway to declare the Mexican drug cartels a terrorist organization. As such, the U.S. military is allowed much more free reign in terms of how they decide to deal with such a threat.

What remains is a film, Sicario: Day of the Soldado, which revels in the excesses of corruption that permeates from all sides. There is no escape from the immorality. There is no relief from the nihilism.

Or are we truly meant to come away remembering the isolated family and thinking that there is at least hope somewhere, hidden far out of sight in the desert between Texas and northern Mexico? I kind of doubt it.

The film tells the story of Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), a dedicated and idealistic young special agent who works the Kidnapping and Response unit for the FBI. One day while working with her team on a mission, they discover a large amount of dead bodies sealed in the walls of a house. She and her team believe that the bodies may be linked to local crime boss who works for a major drug cartel in Mexico. Not long after Macer meets government official Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), who recruits her to be a part of a special joint task force that wants to bring down the cartel alongside the mysterious Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro). As she gets deeper into the mission, Macer discovers that not everything is as black & white as she thought it would be.

Great review and great movie. Such an intense and beautiful-looking ride; I thought the characters and plot could be a little thin at times, but it was made up for by the impeccable production and acting.

3a8082e126