Cinemazlowski 'Sicario' explores moral dilemmas against action-packed backdrop

When faced with pure evil, how far can one go in the pursuit of justice and revenge? That is the fascinating question at the heart of the drug-war thriller "Sicario," which puts audiences smack in the middle of the action as well as the moral dilemmas of a young female FBI agent surrounded by supervisors who might be corrupt themselves.

 

Set amid the dusty, almost lunar landscapes of Arizona border towns and the notoriously crime-ridden Mexican city of Juarez, "Sicario" gives audiences a harrowingly close-up look at the US war against drug cartels. The movie's point of view comes from Kate (Emily Blunt), an idealistic young FBI agent who is shaken to the core by a raid gone wrong in which a massive explosion kills and injures fellow agents and leaves her momentarily deaf and disoriented.

 

Even worse, she finds that the house they were raiding has secret spaces inside its walls – enough so that she and her team find over 30 rotting corpses, wrapped in plastic and entombed where no one was ever supposed to find them. Kate wants to know who was responsible for this so she can get righteous revenge by bringing the murderous drug gang to justice,  and is pulled from her unit to meet with a team of CIA officials who want her to join a daring and covert CIA mission to take down the drug lord responsible.

 

Her two main bosses on the CIA side are the cocky and swaggering Matt (Josh Brolin), and the mysterious Mexican smooth talker Alejandro (Benicio del Toro), who it slowly emerges is a man willing to cross the ethical lines of torture to get answers. Kate's desire to play by the books conflicts with Matt's idea to nab criminals at all costs, and she finds herself in the grip of a plot that is ever darker and more ethically and morally questionable at every turn.

 

"Sicario" is a Mexican slang word for hitman, and that is the approach that Kate's new supervisors adopt towards their work and expect her to follow. But since she has ideals and a clear-cut moral view of the world and her work in it, Kate doesn't see herself as just a killer. She's torn about whether to seek the drug lord's murder at all costs, or to play by the rules of engagement that she has been trained with.

 

In her role as Kate, Blunt expertly conveys her confusion and rattled emotional state, giving her a conscience that almost no other character in the movie has. Her performance is a bit off-beat, as Blunt doesn't play hers with the righteous swagger that Brolin brings to his character, and instead draws viewers in by making them relate to her moral confusion.

 

Brolin brings a more conventional macho-man approach to his role as a veteran agent who can only laugh in the face of the horrors he's experienced, and who has become nearly desensitized to concerns about the ethical boundaries he's supposed to contend with. But It's Del Toro who nearly steals the show, with a character who bears strong similarities to the heroic Mexican cop he played to Oscar-winning effect in the 2000 movie "Traffic."

 

As Kate and the audience learn the full extent of Alejandro's pain, "Sicario" asks viewers to really take themselves to the ethical edge and ask: what would they do if they knew the person responsible for costing them everything they held dear? Can you forgive them truly? Does justice mean killing them and wiping out all chance of them ever committing wrong again, or letting them simply face a trial that could let them off easy? And is it ok that innocent people are caught in the literal and metaphorical crossfire along the way?

 

All of these are tough and valid questions to ask, especially in a political season in which building a wall on the Mexican border has been widely debated, and "Sicario" never feels exploitative in dealing with them. Director Denis Villeneuve shows us the horrors involved in fighting against cartels, but it all feels justifiable in the context of its R rating and subject matter.

 

Viewers should be forewarned that there is frequent foul language throughout, as well as a disturbing quick scene from mid-distance of four dead naked bodies who were killed by drug cartels and are left hanging upside down off a bridge in the middle of Juarez. As ugly as that is, it is also a sad reality the movie is justified in making viewers aware.

 

Yet make no mistake, this is a hard movie to watch, even as it's rivetingly difficult to look away from. If you're squeamish, stay away, but most adults should find plenty to consider and discuss in this brilliant movie.