K-SCORE: 44
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Writer: Taylor Sheridan
Starring: Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin
Spoiler Level: Major
“Did we need to stare at that plate of refried beans for twelve seconds?”
When you’re in the thicket of the drug war, settings are dimly lit, raw, and ugly, people are so obsessed with their horrifying personal histories that present conflicts seem but a passing annoyance, no one believes anyone is capable of understanding what he or she understands, and answering a question is a taboo on the same level as incest. Sicario has the same message as 90% of war films: “It’s bad. It’s so bad you can’t even understand how bad it is. Let me give you a glimpse at the cushy version of this badness. You should walk away nodding, thinking, ‘yes, I don’t understand how bad that is.’ Did you like Sicario? Shut up. Your opinion doesn’t matter. You’re not capable of deciding whether you liked it or not.” I’m tired of this.
In addition to being a slow-paced and humorless story of the drug trade around the US-Mexican border, Sicario is a film with obvious narrative flaws. For one thing, it follows Emily Blunt’s character Kate at all. The central conflict revolves around Benicio Del Toro’s character Alejandro seeking revenge on the drug lord that cut off his wife’s head and burned his daughter in a vat of acid. There is no valid story reason for not telling the audience this sooner, and Kate is only ever a distraction, a bureaucratic loophole, or a waste of time. We would know that it’s a revenge plot if any of the characters ever answered questions! They hear questions, give an ironic smile, and walk away. If you think you’re coming to appreciate the realities of the drug trade from outsider Kate’s perspective, consider that she’s not present for the most important (arguably only important) scene in the entire film. For that, the director knew he had to shadow Alejandro.
Sicario wastes its precious time terribly. The drug trade is complex. There is a ton of violence on both sides, lots of players at various levels, established corruption, many intricacies involved in physically getting the supply across the border, and seemingly insurmountable problems of meaningful progress with Mexico being so impoverished and with the market created by addicts being so deeply entrenched. Yet the film spends insane amounts of time on scenes that don’t connect to the essential issues of the drug war that it wants to address. The world’s most generic meeting takes place for five minutes toward the beginning with a bunch of people in suits staring at Kate and her partner inexplicably sitting with their backs to the glass wall of the conference room. For a while, Alejandro asks a group of immigrants where in the US they’ve been before, wandering around a crowd of irrelevant characters, taking a quick look at their hands. We follow Kate’s developing smoking and drinking habit more than I thought necessary, you know, since I thought she was an unnecessary character. A half dozen times throughout the film, the director chose to depict the life of a corrupt Mexican cop and his nearly silent relationship with his wife and son. Apparently they only communicate about breakfast, soccer, and how the kid shouldn’t touch the assault rifle that he has irresponsibly leaning against his nightstand. The scene adds dubious value to even the themes of the narrative and nothing to the plot. The intro does nothing but reiterate that “the drug war is more horrible than you can ever know.” Even the scene where they drive into Juarez appears only loosely connected to the future activities of Matt’s (Brolin) team, and that’s the best the scene in the film.
All of it could be kept, of course, if the director was willing to speed up the presentation a bit. Did we need to stare at that plate of refried beans for twelve seconds? How many times do we need to see Kate washing blood off herself in a bathroom? Why show her ordering “two beers?” from that bar? Skip to her drinking the beers with her partner. How many times did she need to ask what was going on if Matt was never going to answer? It’s nice that the film had done its research on night vision tactical gear, but it wasn’t needed for the operation where they spent two or three minutes of screen time putting it on and looking through it. The tunnel was strung up with lights. Cut and trim a bit - then you can fit more about the drug trade into the film.
Even with the level of realism to which Sicario aspires, I saw two pretty substantial plot holes. One, how in the world is that house at the beginning hiding corpses in the walls without the whole place smelling potently of putrescent decay? The S.W.A.T. team only discovers them because of a shotgun blast hitting the wall. Secondly, at the end when Alejandro forces Kate to sign a piece of paper that says they did everything, “by the book,” he does so at gunpoint. No signature made under duress is valid in a court of law. And it isn’t like it was notarized. As soon as she disputes that document, it would have been thrown out. So what’s the point of that procedure? Why the drama of her feeling like maybe she should accept a bullet to the brain to stand by her principles?
There is an interesting essential question in Sicario which is: is it worth breaking the normal legal rules of engagement to make meaningful progress combating the evil facilitators of the drug trade? Is it worth it if it means empowering a man who will murder children as part of his revenge against those kingpin criminals? It’s not an easy thing to answer, and I don’t need the film to have answered it. I was impressed by the ideas presented at the very core of the film, but the filmmakers followed an established formula that made their film slow, wasteful, thematically oppressive, and convoluted. It strikes an austere tone from start and sticks with it throughout. Matt is an unhelpful pompous jackass at the start and an unhelpful pompous jackass by the end. Kate is an overwhelmed cop at the beginning and an overwhelmed cop at the end. Alejandro is an angry vigilante at the start and an angry vigilante at the end. I was a skeptical viewer at the start and an irritated one at the end. So, I guess I developed the most.