Sicario: The Price of Justice

The producers of Sicario wanted the female lead role rewritten to feature a man instead. Thankfully, writer Taylor Sheridan and director Denis Villeneuve stuck to their guns and cast the marvelous Emily Blunt, thereby ensuring we have a protagonist we can truly root for in a story of venal corruption and horror. It's a successful example of the kind of female leading roles Hollywood needs to promote.

Blunt plays Kate Macy, a diligent FBI agent who is coming off a horrific raid in Arizona where she found a house that was stuffed with bodies in the walls. The bodies were the victims of escalating gang wars in Mexico, and Kate's boss informs her that she has been selected to join a special task force to investigate this growing "narco-terror." She joins CIA agent Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) and his partner Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro), whose affiliations seem murky. And then she embarks upon a horrific journey that will make her question what exactly it means to serve on the side of justice and whether she really is one of the good guys.

The movie takes so many twists and turns that I won't bother getting into the plot. In essence, it is clear something shady is going on throughout the entire mission and Kate is not wrong in her suspicions that Matt and Alejandro are not particularly trustworthy. The movie is macabre, featuring scads of violence and brutality in the midst of breathtaking landscapes that are exquisitely shot by cinematographer Roger Deakins. The nerve wracking score by Johann Johannsson pounds in your veins, and by the time you get to the final showdown that alternates between natural light and night vision, you'll be on the edge of your seat. Sicario means "hitman" and over the movie's 121-minute runtime, you will have an uncomfortable and thrilling time trying to determine who the true Sicario is. Through it all is Blunt's steady performance, serving as the audience surrogate to this hellish world. 

I can't pretend I completely followed the tangled plot of Sicario or found it that credible. Like most tales of federal corruption, its villains were a bit too villainous and Kate was a bit too naive. But given all the talk about the Middle East, this movie touches on interesting aspects of the drug war and the US interference that is causing so much horror mere miles away from the US border. It is also an extremely visceral movie, geared to make your palms sweat and make you jump in your seat at all the casual violence that goes unchecked due to the power of human greed. This isn't a feel-good movie, but thanks to these expert filmmakers and actors, it's a movie that will certainly get under your skin.