FBI Tactical Team Agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) is recruited by an interagency taskforce (led by Matt Graver (Josh Brolin)) to help track down a notorious drug lord, but soon she finds herself over her head as she doesn’t understand the game plan of the taskforce (and she is warned by Gillick (Benicio del Toro) that nothing will make sense to her).   The task force enters Mexico to retrieve a prisoner and gets ambushed at the border (and they expect it).   Kate is in a world where she is just cleaning up the mess left by the drug lords where the task force is out to stop and/ or control the game.

 

SICARIO portrays the complicated world of the war on drugs where the Mexican drug cartels are very violent and fights between the police and cartels are commonplace like a war zone.  It is a tight thriller with a fantastic cast under the expert direction of Denis Villeneuve.  I wonder what direction the sequel (they are already planning will go), but I take a guess it will focus on Benicio del Toro’s character (and del Toro pays the part very low key and distant).  SICARIO is a gritty movie where nothing is black and white where the CIA think of controlling the drug war by any means necessary.   Go see it, but I think it will have more life as a rental or even in blu-ray and DVD sales than in theaters (where THE MARTIAN will eclipse everything at the box office for the next two weeks).  SICARIO is definitely one of the best action thrillers this year and I can’t wait to see what Denis does with the BLADE RUNNER sequel which films next summer.

 

This review is ©10-3-2015 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission.  Send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com

 

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