movie review - Sicario
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
This is a movie about the state of the "war on drugs", as told from the point of view of an officer from a local law enforcement agency who is drafted following a significant drug bust. As she is drawn into what is clearly a no-holds-barred "kinetic military action", she has trouble adjusting to the way that US forces and their Mexican allies are working well outside of legal means. This is happening with the explicit knowledge of all levels of government leadership. Things escalate until she finds herself participating in an illegal raid with the goals of assassinating leaders of one of the cartels. She has to make a choice.
I enjoyed the gritty look into how things are - or at least according to Hollywood, and I note that this movie is already five years old. I'm not sure this movie is everything that people make it out to be, however. There's lots of intensity on screen but I'm not sure there's the needed investment by the characters or emotional stakes to draw the viewer in. Much is made of the boss withholding information and that at least one of the players has a secret agenda, but these don't add up to characterization and they certainly don't help use believe that a team is forming. In fact, it's like the movie makers want to maximize the sense of confusion and isolation - we don't really even get much sense of the main character's motivations or nature beyond being a good copy. It really doesn't strike me as mattering what our heroine decides when the situation is already this hopeless.
Anyway, it's certainly well shot and the actors are all doing a great job. I always enjoy Benicio Del Toro, Emily Blunt carries the whole thing scene to scene, and it's always a pleasure to see Jeffrey Donovan turn up. The scene that involves him as a lieutenant coordinating an effort to snatch a criminal boss and bring him back across the border is by far the best part of this movie. But after that the movie seems to lose its purpose and after a muddy middle it picks up again but by now the frustration of the characters (or possibly the actors) and the clear sense that they shouldn't be doing what they're doing overrides what they're doing and I found I wasn't invested. You know the kind of extended scene when you skip through action to get to the resolution? It's that, but about 25% of the movie.
Not recommended.