Most action movies don’t try to make statements. Though it might grasp at relevance, a movie that satisfies as thrilling entertainment usually doesn’t try to satisfy as hard-hitting, social commentary. And movies that try to do both usually end up accomplishing one goal better than the other, leaving a negative impression that taints the sense of the whole. Sicario is one of the rare films that satisfies on both counts. It’s full of tense shoot-outs, and it presents ideas that hit like bullets.
The viewpoint character is Macer, an Arizona policewoman fighting in the trenches of the drug war. Some shady government operatives lure her into a bigger battle with the promise of a chance to really hurt the cartels, but they keep her in the dark about what’s happening. She is the conscience of the story, asking ethical questions about ends and means as she sees more of what they’re working on. By the end, she’s in way over her head. It all happens faster than she, or we, can process, and the eventual realization of all they’ve done gobsmacks her, and us.
Director Denis Villenueve coaxes excellent performances from his actors. Emily Blunt stars as Macer, the policewoman, and she conveys convincing vulnerability in her competence; she reminds me of Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs. Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro are effectively creepy as the shady operatives. In the technical elements, too, Villenueve’s filmmaking team excels. Especially noticeable is Roger Deakins’s cinematography, both beautiful and functional, often putting us in the eye of a satellite or a soldier’s night vision goggles. That up-front cinematography calls to mind the same great movie that the setting and subject invoke: Traffic.
As Sicario opens, on-screen text tells us that a “sicarius” was a Palestinian assassin fighting against the Roman Empire, and that in Mexico “sicario” has come to mean “hitman.” But, in Sicario, which side is which? The obvious answer is that the U.S. is the empire and the cartels are the revolutionary hitmen. But the shocking idea is that the identities might be reversed. The U.S. government sanctions methods like the cartels use, fighting evil with evil. Traffic made the point fifteen years ago that seemingly-upstanding Americans could be drug users too. Now, Sicario makes the point that seemingly-ethical Americans can be like the worst drug suppliers too. This is what Macer can’t accept, that we would stoop to that hyper-violent level.
I’m not sure I can accept it either. The drug cartels resort to public beheadings and booby-trap mines, and their leader at one point implies that they learned their methods from us. Without being a naïve patriot, I still think these methods remind me more of terrorists than us, and that that’s still a meaningful distinction. Still, we need to work to keep these distinctions genuine, to keep a collective will like Macer’s, and Sicario helps us reflect on a real policy temptation.
In the end, the most cold-blooded, ruthless sicario of them all advises her to leave town and move to a safer place. “You are not a wolf. This is the land of wolves now.” He doesn’t say it, but he might have called her a lamb. We look forward to the time prophesied in Isaiah 11 and 65, when wolf and lamb live together in peace.
You might also find these reviews of Sicario helpful:
Christ and Pop Culture
Christianity Today
Larsen on Film
Reel Gospel
Reel World Theology