If Sicario the movie was a person it would have a lot damn of confidence, it never shouts, it never tries too hard, it just moves with a steady hand that knows exactly what it wants to do and how to do it and that alone keeps you dialed, hooked the hole time. The opening already tells you you are not getting some flashy action ride, you get bodies in walls, dread in the air and immediately a sense that every choice after this is going to be complicated. What really works for me is how the movie builds pressure without cheap tricks with the sound mix keeps your shoulders tight even in the quiet moments and on top of that the camera feels like a character, always in the right spot, never screaming look at me, just doing the work, it makes the border run and the traffic jam standoff feel like time is slowing down before it snaps. I like how the desert is used, not pretty, not dramatic, just heavy and when the convoy cuts through it, you are right there in the heat. That tunnel sequence near the end really hits, the switch to night vision and thermal feels earned, not a gimmick as it usally is, specially with all the killing we get while on night vision mode plus the blood on the dirt, you feel the claustrophobia and the uncertainty and the way they hold on shots long enough for your brain to fill the gaps is kinda brilliant, you get the idea without them spoon feeding you whats next, it is just solid, tight, clean movie making that does not waste your time.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3397884/
- Platform: PRIME VIDEO
Rottentomatoes Rating
Let me get something out of the way before moving forward, I respect Emily Blunt and she is doing the best with what she is given but her character is basically a spectator with a badge, the movie pretends she is the moral center but most of the time she is running behind the story, not pushing it forward and for me that kills some of the momentum around her scenes. She gets dragged into a mission she barely understands, she keeps asking what are we doing here and by the time answers land she is either shut down or sidelined, it becomes a pattern that makes her feel stuck and yes that is intentional, but intentional does not mean interesting, it just means she is stuck. her partner played by Daniel Kaluuya suffers even more, he shows up for a couple of beats, he argues a bit, he helps set a contrast, then he fades when the movie needs to get back to the real engine of this story, it is not on them as performers, it is just the characters being shaped to react rather than act and I do not think the movie needed that to make its point, in fact the runtime could have used their minutes to deepen the operation or push Alejandro even harder into focus. the bar scene with Bernthal is one of the few moments where Kate’s perspective feels necessary because you feel how every choice has a consequence and how the mission has a long reach even when you think you are off the clock, but outside that, she mostly gets used as a witness so the audience does not get lost, and that is fine once or twice, not for two hours.
Now the two reasons this thing bites down and never lets go, Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro, OMG did this two send it out of the park, one is the smiling wolf in flip flops, laid back on purpose, never sweating even when everyone else is tense, he treats war like logistics, not emotion and that calm is scarier than any bark. Every time Brolin is in front of the camera you know he is three moves ahead and lying by omission, not because he enjoys it but because he thinks this is the only way anything gets done and the movie makes that feel believable without turning him into a cartoon. Then there is Del Toro, the heartbeat you are trying to read but can never catch, the smart choice they made is how little he says, the silence does the heavy lifting, the posture, the stare, the stillness before a room goes dark, cmon he is as badass as it gets, Medellin. When he finally moves on his personal mission the movie goes from tense to ice cold, not flashy, not loud, just clean, deliberate and merciless, and you finally understand what all that calm was hiding its like the finally unleash the beast to claim revenge, it is not twist for shock and it is payoff for everything they set up about order and chaos and who actually benefits when you cut off the head of a snake. That dinner sequence late in the movie is one of those scenes I will remember for a long time, the way it locks into a rhythm, the quiet, the last look, it is all brutal without yelling, it lands because the movie earned the right to be that quiet, its funny how Fausto Alarcon goes from the big boss "balls to the wall I dont give a sht" to this puppy like when Alejandro kills his wife and KIDS in front of him.
There is a thing this movie does that I really enjoy and its that never pretends the rules are going to save anyone, you get told point blank that nothing will make sense to your ears and the more you insist on procedure the less you will actually touch the people at the top, the result is a mission that is equal parts legal and not, useful and poisonous, and that is where the movie shows that awesome grey area that let army units go almost rogue against Narcos. The border sequence is the perfect example, it is slow, methodical, and then it breaks in seconds, you do not get a big shootout for show, you get target identification, tiny body movements, windows cracking, civilians in line who are just trying to get home and that is the weight here, operations are not done on empty stages they happen around real people and that messy overlap is always present. Also the aerial shots work as more than pretty pictures, they give you the chessboard, not to look cool but so you see how many pieces are moving at the same time and how small a single agent will always be against that system, it makes the later tunnel breach feel earned because you have been oriented, you know where the danger is coming from even when the lights go weird and your ears are doing most of the work
It would be easy to call the movie cynical, I think it is more honest than that it shows how people justify ugly things to get uglier things to stop and it does not tell you they are heroes for it, it just says this is what it looks like, decide how you feel about it, I respect that approach even when it makes me uncomfortable. Towards the ending the movie doubles down on that idea, especially with the signature scene where Alejandro lays out a document and asks Kate for a signature under a threat, it is not about good guys or bad guys anymore, it is about power and what happens when you fall under it, the line that follows about wolves is not subtle but it is memorable because the entire movie prepared you to accept it, it hits hard because by then you already saw what happens when sheep ask nicely, how the goverment took advantage of Alejandro skills and vendetta, or who took advantage of who because Alejandro got exactly what he wanted and remains free too. In my opinion the Kate thread does not land, her fights are either shut down by chain of command or put into speeches that go nowhere so her story end feels more like a device than an emotional punch, some will say that is the point, to show how institutions break you if you fight the wrong way, I just wish she was more than a constant warning that everything been done is against the law because seems thats all she cares about and not reading things for what they are and not realizing they are in a war that will never win and their only chance is to keep fighting back.
This is a movie I never get tired of watching, I think Sicario is a very good movie that could have been a great one if it committed harder to the point of view that actually drives the story but this is me asking more for something that is not only genuine but does make you feel the right way about a Narcos / War movie, every time either Brolin or Del Toro are in from of the camera its just pure calculated action, but when Kate comes up then the energy dips, not a lot but enough to notice and those dips add up by the end. I would have loved to trade some of those circles for deeper dives into the operation’s map, more time in planning rooms, more time watching Alejandro before and after, maybe even more time with the rival players across the line so the final act has even more bite, IF they only had more context about Fausto in terms of actual scenes and not only what others say about him during the movie. What I got from this movie is sharp, confident and tense as hell, you feel the dirt, the bureaucracy, the violence and the slow bleed of morality when big machines get moving and when a movie can make you feel all that without yelling in your face, that is a win in my book, movies are suppose to make you feel things and have you forget about the world in those two hours. I will rewatch it for the craft, for the border scene, JUAREZ THE BEAST!!!, for the quiet house at the end and at the same time I will keep being annoyed by how Kate kept naging the entire time instead of just going with the river and learn, the rest is too good to ignore and on the action and tension side, it is one of the cleanest and most confident action movies from the last 10 years, because it is 10 years old now in 2025.
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