★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
Having lay awake half the night trying to figure out just
why Sicario didn’t work for me in the
same way it worked for apparently everyone else, I’ve still no luck in nailing
it down, but I’ll try to explain myself before the sniper scopes of many an
outraged critic take aim.
The latest from Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Enemy, and the upcoming sequel to Blade Runner), the film follows idealistic FBI agent Kate Macer
(Emily Blunt) into the desert of distrust and despair. In the aftermath of a
violent and horrific drug raid which sees her team decimated, Macer is enlisted
by sandal-wearing CIA operative Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) to aid in the
escalating war against Mexican border cartels, working alongside the inscrutable
Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro).
If you’re going to sell your film as a ‘suspense thriller’, it
might help to make good on that promise. I understand that we’re meant to be
kept in the dark just as Macer is as she’s dragged deeper into the cesspit, but
the threadbare nature of the dialogue and the tortuous reveal of information
kept my investment at arm’s length.
I hate myself for saying this, but the action sequences –
excluding with feeling, the fantastic opening and ending – struck me as the high-budget
equivalent of Paranormal Activity:
there’s a lot of walking and talking with little dramatic verve until something
goes ‘bang’ very loudly. Explosions, shady trades and one striking showdown in
the bowels of an illegal border-crossing are far from lacklustre ingredients,
but there’s a very fine line between a slow build and the construction workers turning
up late.
I may be a tasteless moron in the eyes of several readers by
now, but even I can appreciate the
value of a good cast: Blunt is fiercely engaging and believably lost as the
audience eye-view, and Del Toro is continuously fascinating in his role of the
silent and enigmatic spook, whose spoiler-heavy arc prevents me from saying any
more than that. I also grew a soft spot for Daniel Kaluuya as Macer’s number
two, perhaps because he seems just as lost and irritated by the cloak-and-dagger
politics as I was.
A perpetual mood of uncertainty is given great heft by Jóhann
Jóhansson’s pulsating, windswept score while Roger Deakins’ cinematography takes
the cake, delivering a stunning array of powerful imagery that speaks a dial
louder than anything else in the film: the colour beige has never looked so
good, every frame thick with artful symbolism.
As much as I went into this ready to sing my praise to the heavens, I can only be honest about
a film that did so little for me. I have a major inkling Sicario will be something akin to 2001: A Space Odyssey or Blade Runner, both of which I now hold in huge regard: something for everyone
else to rave about around my confounded ears until I give it another go a few
years down the line, realise the error of my ways, and stop using my least
favourite word: overrated.
