What a gloriously grisly autumn we’re having. Denis Villeneuve’s slick drugs-war action drama, like last week’s adaptation of Macbeth, offers all sorts of useful tips for sadists wishing to push the boat out. Decapitation. Acid baths. It’s all here.
Emily Blunt plays FBI agent Kate who is drawn into a clandestine, cross-border operation led by a mysterious duo, Matt (Josh Brolin) and Alejandro (Benicio del Toro). Kate wants to use the law to bring down vicious cartel owner Alarcon (Julio Cedillo). Matt and Alejandro feel a different angle is required.
Blunt’s an expert shape-shifter. This time last year she shone in Into the Woods as a soft-fleshed baker’s wife. In Sicario (as in Edge of Tomorrow), she’s lean and deft with a gun. The one constant in all her performances is an adult approach to lust. As recently divorced Kate clocks a cop with a cowboy swagger, Blunt conveys, beautifully, how it feels to be a lonely woman with a sexual itch. Brolin and del Toro are just as spry and all three actors make the most of Taylor Sheridan’s salty dialogue. Meanwhile, Villeneuve and his British editor Joe Walker ensure that a series of set-pieces (the best involving a traffic jam in Juárez) turn us into sweat-fountains.
It doesn’t hurt that legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins is on board. The guy’s spent years lighting this part of the world (he worked on No Country for Old Men). He’s like an infectiously happy kid stuck in a pulsating bug house. When mutilated flesh enters the frame we’re never grossed out, the colours and contours are just too vivid.
Less satisfactory is the soundtrack, which is one-dimensional and ear-pulverising. And then there’s the third act, which is not only unoriginal (a crucial twist is borrowed from Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic) but morally dodgy. As in Villeneuve’s 2013 revenge thriller, Prisoners, it’s taken as given that torture gets results. What’s even more frustrating is that the film-makers take their eyes off Kate to concentrate on one of her colleagues (I won’t say which one).
Suffice to say, grieving, chivalrous killers are a genre staple and it comes as no surprise to learn that Sheridan is already planning a sequel for this character. As Sicario is the first to acknowledge, smart businessmen exploit addiction. Crystal meth. Movies about sleepy-eyed assassins. Will we ever just say no?
Cert 15, 121 mins
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