Empire UK

Top:Just say no:

Blunt and the FBI

get serious.Above:

Benicio Del Toro’s

inscrutable agent

being actually

quite scrutable.

Sicario

★★★★★
OUT OCTOBER 8 / CERT. 15 / 121 MINS.

DIRECTOR Denis Villeneuve
CAST Emily Blunt Benicio Del Toro
Josh Brolin Daniel Kaluuya

PLOT When FBI kidnap-response
specialist Kate Macer (Blunt) begins
working with two shady “Department Of
Defense advisers” (Brolin and Del Toro)
she fi nds herself on a morally blurred
new front in America’s War On Drugs.

F YOU’VE SEEN

Incendies Prisoners
or most recently
doppelgänger drama
Enemy you’ll know
that Denis Villeneuve
doesn’t do moral
certainty. So he’s perfect directorial
casting for Sicario which broadly is
to the War On Drugs what Zero Dark
Thirty is to the War On Terror — though
it’s entirely fi ctional and at the same
time more honest ( brutally so) about the
ethical cost of its desperate measures.
To the degree that by its end you’ll
be wondering if you even know what
is right and what is wrong anymore.
Don’t let that put you off. Sicario may
at times be a gruelling test of your
sensibilities but it is an entirely brilliant
thriller. Its snaking slow-burning fuse
of a plot sparks when Emily Blunt’s FBI
“thumper” makes a gruesome discovery

during a raid then zigzags across

the US/Mexican border via intense

shoot-outs violent interrogations and

merciless assassinations. “Sicario”

after all is Spanish for “hitman”.

For the most part both the audience

and its proxy Blunt’s character Kate

are kept in the dark as to what the

precise mission is here. Ostensibly it’s

to tackle an increasingly belligerent

Juaréz-based cartel. But how? Coiled

fuming and taut Kate asks schlubby

DOD guy Matt (Josh Brolin rolling on

fl ip-fl ops) what their objective is. “To

dramatically overreact” is his shrugged

reply. He tells her to watch and learn

but proves a don’t-show don’t-tell

kind of mentor. Then there’s Matt’s

laconic wingman Alejandro (Benicio

Del Toro) an inscrutable Colombian

with a reptilian-cool demeanour but

who wakes screaming to nightmares

in Kate’s presence.

First-time screenwriter Taylor

Sheridan (aka Sons Of Anarchy’s Deputy

Chief Hale) at times allows his characters

to slide into cliché-speak (“This is a land

of wolves now”) but Blunt and Del Toro

transcend this with superbly nuanced

performances. Her straight-arrow-sharp

determination becomes painfully dulled;

he is an exhausted monster somehow

inviting sympathy while noxiously

radiating danger.

If there is justice in the world

Sicario will be an all-round Oscar-

magnet. Del Toro and Blunt are strong

shouts but so is Villeneuve himself and

this should really fi nally be the year that

12-time nominee Roger Deakins wins for

cinematography. Through his eye often

peering down from a cloudless sky

tracking the undulating shadow of an

under-the-radar jet the land south of

the border becomes a threatening

crater-riven otherworld. Perhaps that’s

a deliberate visual metaphor. We are

after all in a morally alien landscape.

Villeneuve and Deakins revel in

the twilight — defi nitely a deliberate

visual metaphor. The entire fi lm has

a gorgeously crepuscular quality. Its most

resounding gracenote presents us with

an apocalyptic sunset. Against it Delta

Force warriors become stark shadows

dipping down and disappearing one by

one into a literal underworld: a dead-

of-night-dark tunnel that slices clean

through the border. An image so powerful

it’s impossible to shake. DAN JOLIN

VERDICT A beautifully murky hard-edged

thriller. Quite simply one of the best

fi lms of the year.