Review: Sicario

"Nothing will make sense to you. And you will doubt everything I do. By the end, you will understand," Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro) tells Kate Macer (Emily Blunt). Alejandro is the "sicario" of the title, a hitman who was a former prosecutor, and his words serve as a bracing warning to the idealistic Kate, an FBI field agent who will spend the majority of the movie mired in the murk of departmental politics and dubious methodologies.

Sicario begins with an assault, one conducted by Kate and her less experienced colleague Reggie (Daniel Kaluuya), on a house in Chandler, Arizona. What should have been a Mexican drug cartel leader's hideout is instead a cemetery as she and the team are horrified to discover dozens of bodies lining the insides of the walls. These are not the last corpses that Kate will come across - cartel rule demands bloodshed and bodies, often mutilated, are both totems and cautionary symbols: speak against us and you will be punished.

Alejandro and Kate are part of the special task force, whose member are culled from the C.I.A., D.E.A. and a host of other groups that go by their initials, assembled to track down the man responsible for the mass murders. Their contact is Matt Graves (Josh Brolin), a Department of Defense adviser who is all swagger, bemusement, and opaque proclamations. His objectives are "to dramatically overact" and "shake the tree and create chaos." One can sympathise with Kate, who wonders what exactly it is they mean to achieve and who wants to follow some semblance of procedure in order to do it.

Protocol is not a priority and the lines become ever blurred as Kate is alarmed to witness Graves and his team display the same disregard for human life as the very man they're trying to capture. After a shootout at border patrol, Kate is dismayed to hear that the deaths "won't even make the paper in El Paso," never mind the country. The devaluing of human life is a theme that has underpinned all of director Denis Villeneuve's films (Incendies, Prisoners, Enemy), and there is no more troubling or provocative statement that the one in which Alejandro justifies the team's ethically suspect means to bring down the cartel lord as skin to "finding a vaccine."

If the film's narrative is built on shifting sands and untrustworthy characters, its craftsmanship and execution are founded on care and consideration. Villeneuve possesses a meticulousness that is never dry or clinical, and almost always serves a textural purpose. He immerses us in the procedural, cerebral and the visceral. Structurally, Sicario is a film in three acts, each anchored by a masterfully executed set piece. The most impressive may be the tension-filled transport of a prisoner across the border, a phalanx of cars winding their way through the streets as Kate searches the surroundings for potential threats. The sequence climaxes as the procession of cars find themselves at a standstill, caught in a traffic jam, each passing second increasing their vulnerability to an attack. The words "red Impala" and "green Civic" have never sounded so menacing. Roger Deakins' colour-saturated cinematography, Joe Walker's sharp as a scalpel editing, and Johann Johannson's unsettling score collaborate to amplify the dread and unease that perfume this no man's land.

Blunt is mesmerising, dominating the film's first half with her bristling intelligence, before ceding Sicario's second half to Del Toro. Truth be told, Del Toro owns the film from the first frame in which he appears, maintaining the aura of mystery that surrounds Alejandro. Is he angel or mercy or messenger of death? Perhaps both, perhaps neither. Del Toro's economical approach reaps multitudes, startling us with both serenity and savagery.

Sicario

Directed by: Denis Villeneuve

Written by: Taylor Sheridan

Starring: Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, Victor Garber, Daniel Kaluuya, Jon Bernthal, Jeffrey Donovan