Sicario (2015)
R
5 Stars out of 5
Director Denis VilleneuveWriter Taylor Sheridan
Cinematography Roger Deakins
Music Jóhan Jóhannsson
Editor Joe Walker
Emily Blunt Kate Macer
Benicio del Toro Alejandro Gillick
Josh Brolin Matt Graver
The German language is a kind of Lego language. One can take
any two (or more) words and build a new word. One of my favorites is
weltanschauung, it’s a mouthful for an English speaker to be sure. In English
it means world view. In the original German philosophy sense, it refers to a
person’s or a culture’s method of viewing, interpreting and interacting with
the world they live in. One of the best movies of 2015, “Sicario” has at its
foundation a clash of world views. While the story is superficially about the
futility of the decades long drug war fought by the US government, this movie’s
core theme is how Americans view not just that war, but how they wage it. Like
Francis Ford Coppolola’s 1979 movie “Apocalypse Now”, “Sicario” has two
factions waging a battle that is far deeper than simply killing one’s enemies.
Both of these movies portray a battle of world views: one side that stubbornly
clings (ah…, but maybe not that stubbornly by each movie’s ending) to an old
world view that uses morality and the law to guide their way versus the other
newer and also far more ancient view that says that the ends justify the means.
“Apocalypse Now” had its Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) dueling with Captain
Willard (Martin Sheen); and “Sicario” has former Mexican Prosecutor Alejandro
Gillick (Benicio del Toro) testing the limits of FBI agent Kate Macer’s (Emily
Blunt) sense of right and wrong.
This movie will certainly be on just about every
professional critic’s Top Ten list for 2015. It should also, however, only be
seen by an audience willing to see a movie with a horrifically high level of
violence; a movie where such violence is an absolute necessity to the telling
of this story. “Sicario” begins in a suburb of Phoenix Arizona. Kate Macer
leads an FBI and local PD team into a house as they search for a group of
kidnap victims. They don’t find their sought-after victims, but they do find a
house filled with corpses. This opening scene sets the tone for the movie and like
several others in the film borrow again from “Apocalypse Now” with its views of
helicopters sweeping in for the “kill”. An additional purpose for this opening
scene though is to show Kate’s capabilities in a war zone (one placed in an
American suburb) and to provide her with the motivation she will need in the
subsequent parts of this movie. She wants to find and stop the man responsible
for the murdered victims in the house, a drug cartel hit-man (e.g. sicario in
Spanish) by the name of Manuel Diaz. To do so, she will have to remember her
motivation from that death house as she struggles with her goal and the means
she will use to achieve it.
Because of Kate’s abilities as a leader and her experience
in the field as an FBI agent, she is asked to join a CIA-led team to track down
Diaz. Her partner, Reggie (Daniel Kaluuya) is also considered for the team but
rejected because has been trained in the law. While Kate and Reggie do not hear
the conversation where each is considered for the team, the audience does, and
in so doing is given ample foreshadowing via the comment on Reggie, that the
pending operation against Diaz will not be one “done by the book”. As a member
of the team, Kate soon learns the truth of this last point: the CIA operation
plays very fast and loose with American and Mexican law. Even more to the point
though, is that once Kate starts to question the operation’s team leader, Matt
Graver (Josh Brolin), Kate begins to learn that she is to be kept largely in
the dark about all aspects of the operation including not only the methods, but
also the goal and location of the operation. A perfect example of how little
she is informed is demonstrated on a plane transporting her, Matt, and team
member Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro) from Phoenix to El Paso Texas. Matt
goes to sleep immediately and is clearly not going to answer her questions, but
even more telling is her “conversation” with Alejandro. Kate attempts to ask
Alejandro for information regarding the operation and her role in it. Alejandro
says basically nothing concrete in a stunning performance by del Toro. Instead,
the coiled tension within the Alejandro character speaks volumes. The demons
carried within by Alejandro and clearly seen by Kate portend ominously about
the pending battles they will have with each other.
Kate has her own demons within, of course, but unlike Alejandro’s;
they are not in charge of her. Matt almost surely had or has demons, too, but
the character of Matt as played by Brolin is more of a cipher (in keeping with
his job as a CIA agent) than a wound up spring like Alejandro. Each of these
three characters are uniquely drawn by writer Taylor Sheridan, and under
director Denis Villenueve, each actor achieves performances that should surely
merit attention at Oscar time; del Toro, most notably. Villenueve’s direction
and the editing by Joe Walker have created a movie filled with expert acting,
cinematography, and music that is paced perfectly to create an alternate world
of pending violence and unknown morality. Consider the scenes that come after
the flight to El Paso. After a pulse pounding drive into Juarez from Texas to
retrieve Diaz’ brother Guillermo, the operation team members return to the
border crossing. They become bogged down in traffic. Each team member stares
anxiously into the windows of the adjacent cars, wondering which car might
contain a cartel member. The camera work, music and acting all combine to
create a mood of impending doom.
Impending doom or its threat is constant throughout “Sicario”,
and fully act as the motivators for the clash of worldviews: Alejandro and Matt use it as justification to break the
rules, and while Kate feels it too, she worries much more about its corrosive effect
on her own seemingly anachronistic world view; a world view based on the rule
of law. In a world threatened by terrorists and the erratic leaders of the
Russian Republic or North Korea, this same sense of impending doom, of
potential apocalypse is a feeling known all too well to modern America. What is
the likelihood that any particular society will give into its fears and choose
leaders that like Colonel Kurtz or Matt Graver throw out the values that once
guided it? It’s a question worth considering in 2016 and it seems clear that
Villeneuve worries about the choice and which world view will prevail.
The only criticism I have of the movie is a brief series of
scenes near the end of the film that move the focus away from Kate as a foil and
solely onto Alejandro. The big questions raised by this movie are dropped
briefly in favor of a violent spate of revenge; having said that though, Villeneuve
then moves quickly into several of the most thought-proving scenes in the
entire movie. The closing scenes of “Sicario” have Alejandro forcing Kate to
state in writing that all of their operations have actually “been by the book”.
At first she refuses to cooperate, but as with her actions in the Juarez operation,
she acquiesces over time. Her worldview may not have been permanently changed
yet, but it is fair to say that it is “evolving”. And just like Kate, the final
scenes of “Sicario” show how Juarez’ worldview has also moved on: a sound of
gunfire is heard in the distance during a soccer game; the game pauses, and
then goes forward; the crowd’s attention only momentarily distracted. The numbness they felt, and the acceptance
of the new reality for the citizens of Juarez is shocking; no less so than Kate’s
acceptance of her new reality. As violent as “Sicario” is, it raises questions
that must be asked and it effectively uses violence to ask those questions.
This is not an easy movie to watch, but it is most definitely
in my Top Ten for 2015.
