Sicario OR the most intense film I have ever seen!
Johann Johannson's score for Sicario has to be one of the best soundtracks of the past couple of years that works best at creating intensity in an already tense scene. For example, Emily Blunt's character Kate Macer is taken on a road trip of sorts in Juarez Mexico, in a black ops shootout scene to rival all shootouts in film history, whilst taking place in a stationary set of traffic waiting to re-enter America on the border of Mexico.
The music has an underlying beat and rhythm to the scene which moves slowly but tensely to a finish that creates a bloody massacre in a traffic jam that you weren't expecting to be as out in the open. It's one sided, the Americans are in full force with army like black ops kill shots, whilst the Mexican civilians around them don't even flinch, or freak out, as it is treated like a daily occurrence in Juarez.
It's a simple scene that sets up the rest of the films moral greyness, which Kate becomes more and more accustomed to, but can't live with. She even has to make a kill shot when she is almost killed herself by a Mexican police officer whilst sat in the car completely taken aback from everything that is going on around her. "What the fuck are we doing?!" she says to herself whilst watching the assassination team annihilate the men in the cars within split seconds.
Sicario means "hitman" specifically in this case a hitman for the drug cartel. Whilst we are seeing the films events from the point of view of Emily Blunt's character Kate, we are not given any information that she doesn't already know. Everything is under wraps.
Something which Denis Villeneuve does impeccably, by creating mystery with characterisation, Benicio and Josh Brolin create the dream team of secrecy to the point of frustration. We don't know whether they are good guys who are really bad guys or whether they are almost the same as the bad guys with the power of good with a moral compass that doesn't point north, unlike Kate.
Kate does everything by the book, Josh Brolin's character Matt Graver is a very laid back flip-flop wearing, gum chewing CIA agent intent on finding a way into Mexico to infiltrate the drug cartel by interrogating the team players of Mexico whilst in America, on home turf.
We find out later on, as late as possible when Kate has already been embroiled in the drama, that she was needed because the FBI has rights of power in Mexico when the CIA does not.
Benicio del Toro's character Alejandro is the most secret of the three, he has a past which is slowly unveiled in the film as slowly and seductively as the film allows creating the enigma of Alejandro being possibly the bad guy who got turned or a guy on a mission, someone with a deep plan of vengeance that isn't unveiled until the final third of the film where the film turns the POV of Kate towards Alejandro's mission. It works because of the intensity Benicio brings that you are taken aback by his focus and determination.
It's a film that delves deep into the dirt and nitty gritty of the drug cartel; there is an incredibly shocking scene, when driving through Juarez to pick up the important person linked to the drug cartel, where they see four bodies hung from rope on a bridge in the centre of the city, the Mexican police are surrounding the scene. There are naked bodies, beheaded and bare for all to see.
It's uncompromising to see and is a turning point almost for Kate to see what happens as a consequence of drug cartels and the fight that's taking place in Mexico which the American's are trying to fight with the use of human brutality in retaliation. The brutality of human lives when it comes to the drug business is but one of many indelible images that sticks around after viewing Sicario.
The film has the chance to present absolute morals, half truths, absolute truths, black and white and everything in between; presenting this to an audience already embroiled in the mess of the operation. We are given each and every side of the good and bad that we are the ones working out whether there can be absolute truths when it comes to fighting such causes as drug cartels.
I heartily recommend watching this film if you want an on the edge of your seat, anticipatory film that is not black and white but is grey with dark edges of blurred vision on what is right and wrong when taking the fight straight to the core of everything that is wrong with the world.
I own this particular track from the soundtrack by the genius Johan Johannsson, because it sticks with you, in the film and outside of the film as a standalone track. It's intensity lives on.
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