Dish of the Day
Just some film musings of a more succinct, spontaneous and sometimes seditious nature:
Wednesday, January 24, 2024
Today’s “Dish of the Day” has a review of 2015’s Sicario, inspired by a post in one of the film related Facebook chat rooms. This includes the Cinema Cafe group (all readers are encouraged to join here).
Sicario (2015)
Sicario reveals, and revels in, how hellish the drug crisis has become along the Mexican border. Realism is accented with considerable aptitude, not only in depicting the brutal interworking of numerous life-threatening situations but in the tension between its vividly drawn characters and their escalating emotional responses. The tragic consequences of an FBI agent’s learning curve, as well as a Mexican police officer’s illegal involvement in the drug trade, is consummately conveyed. Performances by the perfectly chosen cast could not be bettered. Director Dennis Villeneuve, with both fire and finesse, takes time to study his participants’ stress related mental processes as they attempt to cope with their intensified and often vicious circumstances, the substance of which can be attributed to Taylor Sheridan’s original screenplay. Sicario’s immersive capability is further strengthened by the creative contributions made by director of photography Roger Deakins, editor Joe Walker and composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, particularly the late composer with his sinister, subterranean-sounding score.
The higher a film’s attributes soar, however, the same distance they can plunge and that’s sadly what has happened here. (***Spoilers***) The downfall comes when your standard personal revenge motif takes over the story’s conclusion. This kind of raison d’être is what savvy film goers have been conspicuously paid off with in countless abysmal action fare. So why here? Must cinema lovers be reminded once again that we are little more than gullible consumers who have just been sold a bill of goods? Then there’s the incredulity of a C.I.A. agent allowing his buddy to go rogue and execute a woman and her children (besides loads of other people). If that's the desired outcome, why not just send a drone to destroy the entire compound? (Answer: because that would fail to capitalise on the targeted audience's baser desire to witness the actual showdown between two adversaries in which the big bad wolf gets his comeuppance). It’s also a denouement that reduces a serpentine, endemic and far-reaching problem to a Hollywood favourite: a state of affairs due to one villain’s making. It’s a point (not to mention one full of its own narrative contradictions) bluntly made to Emily Blunt’s character (and reinforced to us) after she sees something she wasn’t supposed to. If only we hadn’t seen what she wasn’t supposed to, or any subsequent related event, * Sicario would have been a far more honest, sophisticated, and therefore artistically accomplished, motion picture.
* A follow-up scene involving Blunt and Del Toro where she is coerced into signing a statement has credibility issues especially after witnessing the latter’s killing spree without one.
All responses are not only welcomed but encouraged in the comments section below.
Hope to see you tomorrow.
A.G.