I don't like to see movies like these, because they hit too close to the home I miss. Sicario did not just sensationalize drug cartels; it broadcasted the crisis next door by revealing multi-national fronts of crime networks seething south of our borders.
Director Villeneuve, a Canadian really, made a movie like a Mexicano, revealing a socioeconomic dynamic that few outsiders understand. Agent Macer (Emily Blunt) is being broken into her new assignment, battling the War on Drugs at the Mexican border in Juarez. Emily projects all our fears as soon as we cross that border. It's somebody else's territory not attributed to any nation. During Macer's first raid, all the vistas, sounds, and tension are authentic. They make a desperate return to the U.S. border where they are waylaid by Salvadoran Maras; as one of her colleagues commented, that the incident won't even make the news. People are numbed into denial and resignation stuck in such a world. The Colombian cartel's Alejandro Gillick, 'el Colombiano', (Del Toro) is the Sicario (hitman). He aids the U.S. to arrest a Sonoran Cartel boss. Yes, the legal lines get blurred in this covert war, leading to greater twists and turns than the border underground tunnels they patrol. Del Toro brings the Latino villain to new levels. He's on our side; he tortures with his silence; he endangers us.
I like that this movie shows how everybody is at war and no family is safe, depicting the true chaos at our borders and the climate of fear permeating cartel hotspots. I leave it on 10th & Goal.
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