Today’s drug-trade thriller seen theatrically: SICARIO (2015), starring Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, and Benicio del Toro, with supporting work by Daniel Kaluuya, Victor Garber and Jon Bernthal, is one of the best movies of the year and would be one of the best movies of any year, but I need to prevent disappointment among some eager moviegoers by first explaining what it is not, while making sure that this remains a relatively spoiler-free review.
To wit: Emily Blunt, who outright stole the movie that began life as EDGE OF TOMORROW and became LIVE DIE REPEAT from Tom Cruise as a female action hero, is the lead of this one, and so the movie has been anticipated by some as another chance for her to kick ass.
The impression that this might be what you are in for, going to see this one, is only increased by the intelligence that the filmmakers were offered a much bigger budget if they replaced Blunt with a male lead and that they quite rightly stuck by their guns and kept her.
So what you need to know is this: while the movie establishes right away that her character is a highly competent law enforcement professional and that she is many ways more formidable than some of the males around her, she is almost immediately drafted into an inter-agency task force where she is the junior partner, and where she gets to do very little that distinguishes her as a hero.
She is in over her head, ethically and procedurally; she doesn’t have the experience to navigate these waters, and the movie rides largely on whether the moral swamp she has entered by agreeing to this assignment will, or will not, destroy her. She is the lead; the drama plays out on her face. But don’t expect her to headline any action set-pieces beyond the first five minutes. That’s not what this movie is about.
Not that it’s short on thrills. There’s that opening action set piece. There’s a Mexican border crossing that is a long, agonizing wait for something terrible to happen – which is not a mystery; it will. There’s another setpiece set in a smuggling tunnel. There’s Josh Brolin as the head of the operation, who is just a little too jokingly casual about matters of life and death. And there’s Benicio del Toro, as the world-weary participant who takes a shine to Blunt’s character but just might be more dangerous to her than he seems.
So, yeah, the female lead is forced by design to be somewhat more passive than her instincts would allow, but again, the drama plays out on her face, on the eyes that never stop looking, the soul that is steadily more wounded and appalled. Blunt gives what is likely the best actress performance I have seen this year.
It is a great film. Possibly even a capital-G Great Film. But if you’re looking to see an action heroine take charge and kick butt, it is not in this movie. It’s a much different dynamic, and not a less powerful one.
For those who wanna know if it’s big-screen material (and Oh God, I hate that), the aerial photography and the wide-open but still claustrophobic streets of Juarez absolutely are, and the tension that plays out absolutely is.
SICARIO is starting to disappear from theatres, to make way for the bigger fall releases, but is very much worth the trip.
Leave a Reply