Sicario (2015)

Directed by Denis Villeneuve.

Somewhere between a crime thriller and a war movie, Sicario‘s essential argument is that the War on Drugs is actually a war for control of drug distribution in which the United States is actively involved.

It begins with a military-style raid by the FBI on an innocuous-seeming house in a drab town in the American South-West.  Agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) participates in the raid, which discovers the walls of the house are stuffed with the corpses of drug cartel victims.

Kate is recruited to a mysterious task force headed by the louche Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) who heads a bunch of commando-looking irregulars.  On a flight to El Paso they are joined by the even more mysterious Alejandro (Benicio del Toro).  She learns that they are to cross into Mexico to pick up a drug boss being held by the Mexican police and bring him back to El Paso for interrogation. Kate worries that the crossing is illegal, but Matt reassure her and the party cross in a convoy of humvees that evokes the armoured column of American troops invading Iraq in Generation Kill – and indeed there is a sense that Ciudad Juarez is hostile territory.  They collect their man without incident, but they are watched all the way and when they reach  the border crossing the cartel makes its play:

Under torture the prisoner reveals the existence of a cross-border tunnel through which drugs are smuggled, but Matt and Alejandro plan to use the tunnel to carry out a raid on the cartel boss, Fausto Alarcon (Julio Cedillo).  Kate learns that Alejandro’s wife and daughter have been gruesomely murdered by Alarcon because of Alejandro’s connection to the rival Colombian cartel.

Sicario‘s intense action narrative is constructed around the symbolic opposition of Kate and Alejandro.   She is the outsider on the mission, not even clear initially why she is part of it.  His status and his role are unclear, but what is clear is that he knows what is going on.  Matt treats Kate as a spare wheel, and eventually she twigs to the fact that her presence is token FBI involvement to provide a legal fig leaf for CIA activity on American soil.  The “war on drugs” is a fictitious cover for an operation aimed at determining which criminal organisation will control drug smuggling – one more acceptable to the CIA.  Alejandro’s involvement allows him to take off on a personal mission to kill Alarcon, which also happens to suit the CIA.  Kate is concerned with the morality and legality of the operation, which is why she is kept in the dark; Alejandro cares about neither, and his cooperation with the CIA is solely predicated on getting the opportunity for revenge.  They are the most honest characters in the film, and this creates a connection despite their cross purposes.  There’s a little plot sleight-of-hand in their final meeting, but it’s a satisfying conclusion all the same.

Casting Emily Blunt as Kate was an iffy decision.  The idea of an outsider woman in a man’s world is not a problem, in fact it’s an essential part of the film’s inner dynamic, but Blunt herself looks a little lost in the physicality of the role, in the kevlar and helmet and guns.  Still, she makes a decent fist of it, and Brolin and del Toro are perfect.

Two massive advantages to the production are provided by the cinematography and score. Roger Deakins, who has worked extensively with the Coens and also did Villeneuve’s Prisoners, does  a superb job again.  The dusty desert town of the opening scene, the fraught CIA expedition into Ciudad Juarez to bring back  the prisoner, and Alejandro’s bloody revenge are all masterful.  Johann Johansson’s tense, sombre score is constantly unsettling and at times, such as the trip into Mexico, throbbing with menace.

Villeneuve’s achievement is to expose the war on drugs as a great criminal conspiracy without stepping outside the boundaries of the action genre or stopping to preach – it’s just there for all to see.