Critics reviews

Having enjoyed ARRIVAL, we went back in time and watched director Denis Villeneuve's previous hit. SICARIO. It's very impressive, but we were less convinced by the "human killing machine" tropes which climax it than we had been by the hellish drug war developments of the first two acts. Shot by the always-impressive Roger Deakins, it has a more classical style than ARRIVAL with several of the impressive dusk scenes that distinguished NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN.

An alternate reading of the film reveals Macer's arc to be an authentic representation of a woman's experience in a male-dominated career, in which she is doubly constrained by the limits and stipulations of her job. In Sicario, Macer's refusal to do anything outside the law is an ingrained behaviour that echoes women's experiences in the workplace, in which a woman's job-related risk-taking is held under far more scrutiny than that of her male peers.

A nasty film about the drug war on the US-Mexico border that flirts with fascism and artiness, succumbing to the former. The film suggests that the best way for Donald Trump to convince the Mexican government to pay for building a wall would be to tell them it would keep out the CIA.

Even after Zero Dark Thirty barely obscured its White House–authorized message of "all's fair in the War on Terror," Hollywood still manages to convince audiences that political stuff is just too complicated to understand, much less do anything about. Funny thing, though: it turns out that this faux moral ambiguity, viewed from the reassuring distance of commercial cinema, is so damned entertaining.

By the end, Kate appears less and less like a genuine character and instead a stand-in for what the film seems to see as a feminized American people who need masculine, militarized leadership. Supporters of a military coup in the United States would love Sicario, as would politicians who grandstand about the need to close the US-Mexican border.

Sicario, which is currently playing in general release, is one of the most formally accomplished things at the multiplexes, a triumph of cinematography, lighting, production, and sound design. Taken together, these qualities establish an unsettling atmosphere that goes a long way in giving the movie its power.

Sicario doesn't have much to contribute to political dialogue besides the sentiment, ʻYou probably shouldn't trust anyone in the CIA,ʼ which should already be staggeringly obvious. This large ideological caveat aside, the film is relentlessly effective at keeping viewer nerves frayed; the ominous slow dollies, zooms, close-ups and other acts of directorial aggression slathered over Prisoners work much better with halfway credible material.

This is imagistically sophisticated storytelling; this is the work of talented people. This is also what is so obscene about Sicario, which not only matches Prisoners in terms of bogus dramaturgy and basic disregard for the laws of cinematic plausibility but also tops it as far as the ugliness of what's being put across with such immaculate skill.

Sicario offers neither the scope nor the depth to give more than a broad-brush picture of the war on drugs and how the violence and corruption have spread upwards beyond the Rio Grande. There's nothing to balance out its vision of Mexico as a no-go zone where drug wars rage and fire must be fought with fire.

Villeneuve delivers a strong, nuanced take on the increasing militarisation of United States police forces and the war on drugs with enough substance to appease long-time fans and enough bells and whistles to please a wider, less cinephilic audience. While remaining a sustained effort overall, clear meddling from producers, serving to undercut Villeneuve's previously demonstrated mastery over complex plotting and structure, holds his latest back from reaching its full potential.

From a handful of recent features, Denis Villeneuve has quickly become known for his almost comically portentous atmosphere. But here, with the help of legendary DP Roger Deakins (who also shot Villeneuve's gorgeous and hysterically grim Prisoners), the director finally melds that sensibility with precise, pulpy thriller mechanics in a way that probably nobody's done since Fincher with Seven.

Aside from that performance and Roger Deakins's cinematography, which is full of desert sizzle and searchlight-generated shadow, I'm not buying this movie; and I've seen it twice. Mostly because Villeneuve and screenwriter Taylor Sheridan aren't selling more than a tautological action movie with the dread and body count of a horror film. A friend and I were just saying about Villeneuve the other day that he really doesn't care what he's directing as long as it shows off his abs.