Sleeper Recs: Sicario

“Sleeper Rec” Rules:

• Not nominated for Best Picture.

• Under $200 Million U.S. Box Office.

• Regardless of genre, I’d recommend these films to almost anyone.

Year Released: 2015

Runtime: 121 minutes

Directed: Denis Villeneuve

Produced: Basil Ilwanyk, Edward L. McDonnell, Molly Smith

Starring: Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, Benicio Del Toro, Victor Garber, Jon Bernthal, Daniel Kaluuya

Oscars: Won: Nothing. Nominated: Best Cinematography, Best Score, Best Sound Editing

IMDb Plot Summary: An idealistic FBI agent is enlisted by a government task force to aid in the escalating war against drugs at the border area between the U.S. and Mexico.

Sicario as a Sleeper Rec

The Story and Characters of Sicario. I want to start this review off by acknowledging a piece of controversy the film generated when it debuted in 2015: the mayor of Ciudad Juarez urged his citizens to boycott the film, claiming that the picture the film painted may have been accurate in 2010, but not in 2015. Denis Villeneuve has also mentioned that the film was conceived in 2010, at the height of the violence around the city where the official murder rate was around 8 a day. In 2015, Juarez was averaging one a day, and since then Tijuana (also on the U.S. border) has replaced it as the most dangerous city in the world (although Juarez certainly still makes the list). Sicario may not offer us a statistically accurate document of the War on Drugs, but instead creates an entertaining and taut suspense thriller that places us in the world of the War on Drugs with breathtaking realism and storytelling efficiency. Just as The Wire did, it merges entertainment value with real-world, meaningful commentary on the complex and never-ending cycle of violence that drugs create; to deny its existence is as futile as thinking that it’s a problem that’s easily solved. This is the whole point of Emily Blunt’s FBI Agent Kate Macer: despite being quite competent in her own right, she is quickly in over her head in this world and her by-the-book mentality and ideals are proven to be quite ineffective in this war. And while the film is certainly entertaining, Taylor Sheridan’s incredibly smart script also makes us quite aware of the cost that this war can inflict on everyone; in this vicious system, there are no innocent parties nor are there are pure villains. Even the ostensible figurehead of the entire cartel is ultimately a father who loses what’s most precious to him, and all fathers, in the end. This is the land of the wolves.

This is a hard-edged thriller, and the cast steps up. Jon Bernthal makes what could almost be considered a cameo as Ted, a police officer revealed to be corrupt who nearly kills Kate in a well-executed twisty scene. This was my introduction to Daniel Kaluuya, who’s yet to find a role that he can’t perform incredibly well in, is quite good as Kate’s protective FBI friend Reggie. This film also has Jeffrey Donovan burying himself in a moustache for a post-Burn Notice supporting role as an operative on Josh Brolin’s team; Brolin, as always, brings a strange and almost oddball energy mixed with his intense presence and gravitas. It isn’t until just after the cross-border extraction of Guillermo Diaz that we realize that Brolin’s Matt Graver is playing third fiddle in the film, and the two leads are in fact Blunt and Del Toro. Their characters are drawn as complete opposites, and yet as the story progresses an affection – caring, not romantic – develops between them that adds an awful lot of depth, and the two have the performances to match. Emily Blunt proved her worth as a female action star in Edge of Tomorrow the previous year and cashes it in alongside her ability to draw the audience into cheering for her character’s methods and worldview. However, the range of Del Toro’s performance is still fully revealing itself right up until the final frame, and since the film’s message is ultimately that this situation is too far gone for her “by the book” attitude, his performance lingers the most when the credits roll.

Technicalities. Denis brought back his collaborators from my previous film, Roger Deakins and Johan Johansson, and together the trio once again proves incredibly effective. What’s quite fascinating is how adaptable they are to the source material that they are working with – at first glance, there’s no way we have the same director, composer, and cinematographer as we did on Prisoners. I believe that speaks to the power of Taylor Sheridan’s script (who went on to write Hell or High Water and Wind River), that the filmmakers were able to all see the vision that Taylor had when he penned the script. Where this film really shines, however, is between the dialogue when Villeneuve, Deakins, and the editing team are free to create some of the most suspenseful scenes of the decade shot through with an incredible sense of realism and set to Johan Johansson’s transgressive score. Spoiler alert: my highlight reel will be filled with such scenes. However, this film’s intelligence lies, as does the intelligence of Hell or High Water, in the film’s ability to make profound statements by placing a semi-familiar type of crime thriller right into a very ugly part of modern America, and through quite sharp dialogue. I welcomed Villeneuve into our lives with Prisoners, but with Sicario I’m proud to welcome Sheridan.

The Legacy of Sicario. 2015 was quite a good year for film, but I think that worked against Sicario in terms of both its box office results and awards season results despite critical acclaim. Spotlight, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Big Short, and The Revenant were all both commercial hits and seemed to dominate awards season discussion, with films like Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn, and The Martian lingering just behind them. If you look even further in the year in film, however, there are some absolute gems, the greatest of which may be Sicario. This film’s fantastic hard edge and brutally bleak view of the world may have also been holding it back from being the sensation that Villeneuve’s next film, Arrival, was. Everyone involved in this project has only gone on to bigger and better things (with the arguable exception of Del Toro), but Sicario also represents a truly special type of movie that is fast disappearing; an original, mid-budget, adult-oriented, socially relevant yet entertaining, technical masterpiece. Perhaps I should move to a small town where the rule of law still exists, and movies like this still come along often.

John’s Highlight Reel

• Opening Raid. If I were to teach a film class (which no one should ever let me do) and we were talking about how the first scene in a movie can both set the tone of the film while kick-starting the plot of the film, I would show this scene every damn time. Villeneuve and Deakins conjure up some truly unforgettable and brutal images here; enter this tense film with caution.

• Extraditing Guillermo. Following some smartly plotted mystery around both Brolin and Del Toro’s characters, we are given a stress-inducing masterclass of filmmaking during the entire 15-minute sequence involving the convoy crossing the border, being escorted through Juarez, and then re-entering the United States. The score is dark, deep, and at times angrily noisy. The editing is so precise that we feel every second of this stressful journey, and every bead of sweat before the brief spurts of violence that occur during the “shootout”.

• Questioning the Migrants. This film is peppered with scenes that remind us of the desperate situation that civilians living within the same geography as the cartels find themselves in, and no scene captures that more perfectly than this one. The film’s plot only becomes murkier, even as the characters get more fully rounded.

• Tunnel Raid. The footage that Deakins conjures through thermal vision, night vision, a dimly lit tunnel exploding in gunfire, and most impressively the silhouettes of soldiers moving across the land in the final seconds of any daylight is stunning. Villenueve smartly keeps the opponents off-camera, to add to the general confusion and tension in the tunnel.

• Medellin. Silvio, who has been introduced to us through a handful of interludes, unceremoniously and suddenly meets his end at the hand of Alejandro at what ends up being the beginning of a perfectly controlled stealth kill rampage. The protracted conversation that he has with Alarcon, including the excellent line referencing the cartels being a direct product of the CIA, is grueling in its tension. The sudden kill ends up not being Alarcon, but the unthinkable: his wife and sons in a literal instant. There’s been more violent in recent memory, but I don’t know if there’s been more fierce.

• “You are not a wolf.” Here’s the acting showcase between Blunt and Del Toro we’ve been waiting for, as well as the anticlimax that we didn’t know we’ve been waiting for. This is thesis statement in the closing paragraph, and it’s marvelous. The film’s epilogue is another masterstroke, a wordlessly choreographed scene in which Silvio’s now-fatherless son plays soccer which is briefly interrupted by distant gunfire before play resumes.

Other 2015 Sleeper Recs

• Steve Jobs. This film, written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Danny Boyle, seemed to have flown quite under the radar, and is maybe one of the most hidden gems this decade had to offer. I think Sorkin’s unique structure, telling his story in three acts that each unfold in real time backstage at significant events in Jobs’ professional life, may have put some people off who were expecting a more traditional “cradle to grave” biopic. Nevertheless, the filmmakers and cast give a searing impression of the good, the bad, and the ugly of this towering industrial figure. Come to learn about Steve Jobs, stay to truly spend time with an interpretation of him.

• Carol. I had to check twice to ensure that this wasn’t nominated for Best Picture, because one of the most beautiful films of the year, set in the 1950’s and detailing an illicit lesbian romance as well as evoking how society treated women in that time, feels like it damn well could have won Best Picture. I certainly wouldn’t have been mad if it did. Come for two excellent lead performances, stay for a wonderfully elegant film.

• The Hateful Eight. If Tarantino makes a movie, it will inevitably gain attention, and often for good reason. I was lucky enough to see this movie in its “roadshow” format, with an overture and an intermission and a few deleted scenes. This chamber piece and whodunnit feels like a play, but whenever the violence erupts its easily among some of Tarantino’s most graphic – which is really saying something. Come for Tarantino, stay for actors having the most fun while saying some of QT’s best dialogue – which is also saying something.