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    Sicario

    I was really looking forward to this, but it's something of a disappointment. There are three extremely tense set-pieces/shoot-outs, and not a whole lot else in between.

    Emily Blunt has the main role, but her character is desperately thinly written. She spends most of the movie looking bewildered and demanding some straight answers from Josh Brolin. It's not a question of bad acting, it's just that she has so little to work with. Brolin's own character is complete cardboard, all he's missing is a big cigar as he drawls out of the side of his mouth.

    And even though this is a film about an amazingly vicious conflict happening literally a few yards outside the US, there's no real attempt to acknowledge the wider context of why all this has been taking place for the last ten years. I wasn't expecting one of the main characters to give an earnest ten-minute speech about the failure of the war on drugs or anything, but the whole thing is presented as a series of incidents in just another action thriller.

    It's not an awful film, not even a weak one, but it could and should have been so much better.

    #2
    Sicario

    Saw this last week and I would agree.

    I thought the Benevio del Toro character was the most engaging of the cast, but his personal revenge mission was rather too easily accomplished in the end.

    I was never bored with the film, but never completely riveted either.

    Comment


      #3
      Sicario

      I liked it a bit more than that, but I do agree about Blunt's character. I was reminded a lot of Silence of the Lambs in how we were finding everything out through her character, and the night vision sequence at the end seemed to be a very conscious homage to it.

      I thought the cinematography was excellent. The shot of them going out on the missing toward the tunnel, silhouetted against the sky, was both beautiful and menacing.

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        #4
        Sicario

        Well, old Coen Brothers favorite Roger Deakins was responsible for that.

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          #5
          Sicario

          Yep. Scorsese used him for Kundun, I think Scorsese's most visually beautiful film, but they only worked together on this one.

          He did Sicario director Denis Villenueve's Prisoners, and they're doing the Blade Runner sequel together. I just got a lot more interested in that movie.

          Comment


            #6
            Sicario

            Good essay on why Sicario is a simplistic "Yanks brave, Mexicans lawless animals" morality tale.

            https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/visualizing-the-war-on-drugs-sicario-and-cartel-land/

            Comment


              #7
              Sicario

              The whole scene near the beginning of them driving through customs to Mexico and then back again with their prisoner was really exiting, set the film up to be something quite promising.

              Have to agree with OP on the whole though.

              Comment


                #8
                Sicario

                hold on, I thought that the point of the movie was that the Yanks were also seriously bad.

                Spoilers.

                As far as I understood the movie, the whole point was that the CIA were helping a colombian Cartel assassin to kill the leaders of a Mexican cartel, so the Colombians could take over control of the cross border drugs trade.

                I don't know if that is "Yanks brave, Mexicans lawless." So much as "Americans utterly fucking insane and flat out evil, Juarez destroyed by this madness."

                Comment


                  #9
                  Sicario

                  Mexico is uniformly presented throughout the entire movie as a hugely dangerous, war-torn hellhole, which is incredibly selective and disingenuous. I've been to various parts of Mexico on several occasions since 2010, including along the border (the diciest part of the entire country), and not once have I ever been made to feel the least bit threatened or intimidated. The makers of Sicario made the place out to be a two million-kilometre version of Beirut and, as the LA Review of Books article points out, kept dropping in plenty of unsubtle little reminders that Mexico and Mexicans are alien and weird and Other.

                  As mentioned earlier, there is also zero effort made by the film to explain why any of this is happening in the first place. If they wanted to ignore the context, then they should just have fired ahead and made a no-holds-barred actioner. Instead we get this weak halfway house between a state-of-the-nation polemic and a straightforward apolitical action thriller.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Sicario

                    There was discussion in the film about a Mexican official's children being in Monterey rather than Juárez as it was safe there. It actually felt deliberately shoehorned in to try and acknowledge that not all of Mexico was the same, a bit of a token gesture maybe but it's there.

                    .

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Sicario

                      i can't remember, did they show any other part of mexico except juarez?

                      sounds like you should have watched cartel land instead.

                      but yeah, i'm not sure how you get "yanks brave" out of it, given that most of the movie consists of them murdering and torturing people and the only reason emily blunt is there is to provide a veneer of legality to what is in fact a state-sponsored death squad. yanks corrupt and murderous more like.

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                        #12
                        Sicario

                        But it's only a year or two ago since more people were recorded murdered every year in juarez, than in the whole of the troubles put together. in 2009 20% of the city just upped and left, abandoning over 100,000 homes. and leading to the closing of half the city's businesses. It's a really terrible place.

                        The Death rate seems to have dropped considerably, in large part due to the sinaloa cartel completely wiping out the juarez cartel

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                          #13
                          Sicario

                          garcia wrote: i can't remember, did they show any other part of mexico except juarez?

                          sounds like you should have watched cartel land instead.

                          but yeah, i'm not sure how you get "yanks brave" out of it, given that most of the movie consists of them murdering and torturing people and the only reason emily blunt is there is to provide a veneer of legality to what is in fact a state-sponsored death squad. yanks corrupt and murderous more like.
                          The activities in which the Americans engage in the movie are depicted as ultimately noble dirty work in the service of a greater good, eggs being broken to make a necessary omelette. That's the whole point.

                          What makes you assume I haven't watched Cartel Land?

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Sicario

                            GC, the point of the movie surely is that it's an entirely unnecessary omelette. They're not stopping the flow of drugs into the US. They're engaging in all sorts of terrible behaviour, merely to replace one cartel with another that promises not to kill any FBI agents.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Sicario

                              Yes, and the vibe I got from it is that the bad behaviour is wholly justified, because America.

                              Did you not think it was a terribly disappointing film? Take away the three shoot-outs and it would have hardly anything to recommend it at all.

                              Comment


                                #16
                                Sicario

                                The activities in which the Americans engage in the movie are depicted as ultimately noble dirty work in the service of a greater good, eggs being broken to make a necessary omelette. That's the whole point.
                                that's not it at all. the american authorities are shown as corrupt murderers whose agenda is entirely self-serving. i would have thought this was made sufficiently clear by the scene in which benicio del toro's character murders the wife and children of the cartel boss before executing him. it's pretty plain in that moment that del toro is motivated purely by revenge, he's not trying to make any fancy political or social omelettes. a few minutes later del toro explains quite calmly to emily blunt that she has to sign off on the forms saying everything she saw was legit... or he'll kill her.

                                in so far as the movie is making any points about the real world, i'd read them as 1) the US authorities are little different from the cartels in their methods of operation and 2) this ruthless style of policing does little but perpetuate the cycle of violence - without which these killers would have to find another job.

                                Comment


                                  #17
                                  Sicario

                                  I have to say I read the film's message exactly the same as garcia and TAB did.

                                  The Americans (with the exception of Blunt and her partner, who are mere ciphers) and del Toro are amoral monsters whose actions shown on screen are at least as bad as anything we actually see carried out by any Mexicans.

                                  .

                                  Comment


                                    #18
                                    Sicario

                                    Having mis-spelled the title and started another thread by mistake, I'm now in the right place. Looks like I'm the TAB/Garcia/RdG side of the fence here.

                                    Watched this on a flight a few days ago. I found it seriously powerful and there was genuine tension through much of it, especially the sequence in Juarez. Emily Blunt and Benicio del Toro were excellent, and the latter achieved an impressive level of menace.

                                    The thought the Americans were "doing the right thing" never really occurred. Everyone was as foul as everyone else.

                                    Edit: apart from the poor Mexicans trying to get over the border.

                                    Comment


                                      #19
                                      Sicario

                                      The director is making a science fiction film depicting humankind's first encounter with an alien intelligence next.
                                      He'll also be directing the sequel to Blade Runner...

                                      Comment


                                        #20
                                        Sicario

                                        Interesting to hear some of these criticisms. It was my favorite movie last year. Saw it multiple times in theatres.

                                        Heard it described at the time as 'Apocalypse Now for the War on Drugs'. Still think it's a pretty apt description.

                                        Comment


                                          #21
                                          I saw the sequel Soldado last week. It was certainly tense, brutal and absorbing but not quite the film the original was, unsurprisingly.

                                          I thought it was a good move to focus on Brolin and del Toro’s characters from the first film, both because they the most interesting facets of that movie and for the practical reason that Blunt and Kaluuya’s success has probably made them harder to secure. There seems to have been an attempt to humanise and even lionise both of them though and I’m not sure how successful or advisable that is given their general amorality. The female lead Isabela Moner is fantastic and I have to presume she will continue to play a central role in any third movie.

                                          SLIGHT SPOILER


                                          The climax of the movie hinges around a plot point that, while just about plausible, may ruin it for some people. I decided to go with it but I think many may not.

                                          Comment


                                            #22
                                            Read Don Winslow's 'Power of the Dog' & 'Cartel' if you want a riveting, engaging story which also gives you the historical context. Terrifying and incredibly shocking what went on, what is still going on. America needs to call a truce on the war on drugs and legalise the lot or democracy and the rule of law are dead.

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