If judging by ‘Sicario’, the battle of the United States against drug cartels is as senseless and confusing as that against terrorist groups. Violence begets violence, and the deadly tentacles of these criminal organizations, due to American intervention or despite it, spread uncontrollably.
Denis Villeneuve and his director of photography Roger Deakins see the world similarly to the legendary Hungarian director Miklós Jancsó in his masterpieces ’Red and White’ and ’The People Without Hope’. Like a God who does not intervene, largely from a bird’s-eye perspective or through surveillance systems, they observe the pawns who perish and the unstoppable transactions of evil that do not pause for a moment. Only the world ’Sicario’ is not planet Earth, but the ninth circle of hell where only drug lords, Latino avengers, and American cowboys in search of adrenaline can navigate. Our eyes into this world are those of Emily Blunt, excellent in the role of an honest and naive American policewoman whose fear does not manifest in dramatic dialogues, but in widely dilated pupils and liters of sweat. However, there is no place for such here. ’Sicario’ loses its compass only in the last 20 minutes when it shifts to a story of revenge. And that part is thrillingly directed, although out of the context of the plot. Nevertheless, it is one of the best films of the year.
