The “War on Drugs,” first proclaimed by
President Richard Nixon in 1971, escalated in
the 1980s to the extent that by 1997 over
400,000 people were imprisoned for misdemeanor,
nonviolent drug–related offenses. In an ideal
world it would be easy to distinguish between
the “good guys” and the “bad guys” working in
the drug war, but in the world of intelligence
agencies, drug kingpins, and local police, the
distinction is murky and the end justifies the
means, whether legal or not. In Dennis
Villeneuve’s sizzling Sicario (Spanish for
hit-man), written by Taylor Sheridan, the naïve
and humane often find themselves only as pawns
in the game. Such is the case with, Kate Macer
(Emily Blunt), an idealistic FBI agent (is that
an oxymoron?) who wants to play by the rules.
She is asked to join an interagency task force
but has no clear idea of why she was selected,
who the people really are that she is working
with, or what the ultimate goal of the mission
is. All she is told is that she and her
colleague, Reggie (Daniel Kaluuya) will be
assisting in hunting a dangerous drug lord, and
that she will work with Matt (Josh Brolin), a
disheveled looking man who wears flip-flops and
a stout, enigmatic man named Alejandro (Benicio
del Toro), both alleged government contractors
working for the Department of Defense.
On their first meeting, Matt tells Kate,
“Nothing will make sense to your American ears,
and you will doubt everything we do.” When the
truth eventually does come out, it does not in
fact make sense and the results are not pretty.
The film opens with a raid by the FBI and an
Arizona SWAT team on a house owned by a drug
lord near the Mexican border. To a pounding
soundtrack by Johann Johannsson that ratchets up
the intensity, the agents discover the gruesome
sight of twenty-five dead bodies covered in
plastic bags sealed into the walls of the house
and a subsequent explosion that leaves several
agents dead.
It is a high-octane opening that sets the tone
for the rest of the film. Though Kate is told
she will be going to El Paso, she finds herself
in Ciudad Juarez, a seedy border town that looks
like you just skipped purgatory for the real
thing. In Juarez, the convoy of intelligence
agents is accompanied by a police escort but
Kate is told never to trust the police and to
have her gun ready at all times. Along the way
they come across one of the city’s main tourist
attractions, rows of dismembered bodies,
presumably of illegal immigrants, hanging on a
highway overpass. The treats are just beginning,
however.
Soon we will witness a fierce shootout at a
border crossing as a convoy of intelligence
agents is attempting to bring captured drug boss
Guillermo Diaz (Edgar Arreloa) to the US, and a
tunnel crossing project that is designed as a
diversion to allow Alejandro to come back to
Mexico to complete his murderous revenge
mission. After Kate learns the truth about Alex
and realizes that the purpose of the mission was
not to stop the flow of illegal drugs into the
U.S. but to see who can control them to maximum
profit, she is told by Alejandro, “You will not
survive here. You are not a wolf. This is the
land of wolves now.”
Sicario is a tense and involving thriller with
brilliantly conceived set pieces and outstanding
performances by the three leads. It is Blunt,
however, who is the standout, the moral center
of the film whose choice to play the game or
face death is a choice none of us should ever
have to make. If the message of the film is just
to tell us that moral compromise is the way the
world works, it would not justify the screen
being littered with dead bodies. It may,
however, have a deeper message, one that
suggests that legalization and regulation of the
drug trade may be the only thing that could end
this tragic standoff.
GRADE:
A-
Howard Schumann
