Sun 18 Nov 2018
SICARIO. Lionsgate, 2015. Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, Victor Garber. Director: Denis Villeneuve.
When a young female FBI agent (Emily Blunt) is recruited to join an elite task force assigned to bring down a Mexican drug cartel, she agrees readily enough, but when she shows up for work, she finds herself on the outside and along only for the ride.
And this is the problem. Not only is she totally confused as to what it that’s going on and what it is she should be doing, so is the viewing audience — and so was the scriptwriter. The story makes no sense at all.
As it turns out, the task force is doing things totally illegally as far as respect of international borders is concerned. The ends justify the means? Well, maybe. The drug cartel and its elusive boss are doing very nasty things, and they deserve to be brought down. But why recruit someone who plays it straight and goes strictly by the book?
It is also not to say that Emily Blunt is at all convincing as a tough head of a FBI SWAT team. She’s far too slight in size and stature. She’s a little girl playing with the big kids on the block in dress-up clothes. She’s very good at sitting in a car or a bus looking out the window wondering what it is that’s going on, but little else.
Nor is the ending worth waiting for. It’s very dramatic, I grant you, and we do find out two things: (1) why Benicio Del Toro’s brooding liaison character has been hanging around since the beginning of the operation, and (2) the meaning of the film’s title (which translated means “Hitman,” or so I’m told).
But when it comes down to it, Emily Blunt’s character is shoved aside for a good portion of the end of the film. While this does allow the real story to be told, it’s very unsatisfying that she’s not there to be part of it. Emily Blunt is the star of the movie, but there’s almost no reason she had to be in it. (Of course, if she isn’t, there’s no conflict of ideas, and it’s an entirely different story than the screenwriter intended to tell.)
A complicated film, in other words, but one that just didn’t connect with me. The photography is nice, though.
November 18th, 2018 at 11:05 pm
The sequel stays with Del Toro and is a little better for it, but I felt the same way about this one, something of a disappointment.
November 19th, 2018 at 1:30 pm
I have not seen the sequel, but I have read about it. Josh Brolin’s character is also in it, but not Emily Blunt’s, though there was discussion that she would be at one time.
What it sounds like to me is that the second film is what the first film would have been if Emily Blunt had not been in it. Just another thriller movie with the good guys up against another Mexican drug lord, without any discussion of whether the ends justify the means or not.
I don’t think the first movie was done well, but at least it did have ideas involved.
But as I say, I have not seen the second film. I may have understood what it is all wrong. But with my apologies, at the moment, I have no desire to see it, either.
November 20th, 2018 at 7:14 am
Masterpiece! I think its appreciation will grow over time.
November 20th, 2018 at 2:18 pm
The sequel certainly came along fast enough, which has to mean that a lot of people feel that same as you, Johny.
I still think it could have better, but I don’t know how the story lie could have been fixed without making it a completely different movie.