This film has been on my Netflix list for a long time. Originally released in 2015 and starring Benicio del Toro, and Thanos.. i mean Josh Brolin, it has a lot of elements that I look for in a film.
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The film actually focuses mostly on a female agent named Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) but I don't recognize her from anything so that is why i mentioned the fellas.... She is an FBI agent who works busting cartels and because of her performance she gets invited to be part of a team lead by Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) who works in a rather unorthodox fashion and appears to be given everything that he needs without needing to report to anyone "higher up." This is evidenced in the first scene we see him in where he is in a conference room with very important people and he is sporting casual clothes including flip-flops.
She is later introduced to a mysterious agent Alejandro Gillick (del Toro) whom she is given very little background information on when she accepts her position to this joint task force that was created by the Department of Justice.
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Their mission is to bring down the Mexican drug cartel, or so it would appear. As the story carries on we become privy to the real objective and while this film is fiction, some of the overall points that they make seem very believable in a real-life situation. I am intentionally being vague about this because it would be a massive spoiler to do otherwise.
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The night-vison and thermal cams form a 1st person perspective were pretty awesome
The movie is entertaining not just because of this plot twist, but also the overall direction of the film, in particular the action sequences, is kept tense by the 1st person perspectives, the driving musical score, and the various settings they find themselves in. Agent Kate Macer goes through a crisis of conscious as she tries to come to terms with this clandestine organization that she was thrust into.
While this film wasn't a tremendous success at the box office, it did make a decent profit. It's failure to capitalize more has a lot to do with the fact that it was released the same weekend as "The Martian" and "The Walk," which had far larger marketing campaigns than Sicario.
I found Sicario to be well done and also captivating because of its potential real-life connections. There are some dull moments but as it turns out they are pretty essential to understanding the entire story. Plus a film can't just be flat-out action the whole way through. I can't rank this super high because it is missing a few elements that I can't exactly put my finger on.
On a scale of "Urgh!" to "Wowsers!" I give Sicario the overall score of......
Yip Yip Yip!