Sicario

Along the lawless border between the United States and Mexico, drug cartels rule and “sicario” means hitman. In French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve's grim and grisly thriller, idealistic FBI field agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) and her partner Reggie Wayne (Daniel Kaluuya) discover rotting corpses stashed behind a drywall in an Arizona subdivision. Soon after, Kate is recruited by a shadowy government task force, headed by scruffy Matt Graver (Josh Brolin). She works with a covert black-ops squad led by burly, vengeful Colombian “consultant” Alejandro (Benicio del Toro), who cryptically tells Kate: “Nothing will make sense to your American ears, and you will doubt everything we do.” First on the agenda is an unorthodox trip over the Rio Grande and through the cactus-filled Chihuahuan Desert to Juarez to retrieve a prisoner in order to make him squeal on the Sonora cartel, which leads to the capture of businessman Manuel Diaz (Bernardo Saracino), a step towards flushing out the kingpin, Fausto Alarcon (Julio César Cedillo). Meanwhile, there's a subplot involving a young Mexican policeman (Maximiliano Hernández), his dutiful wife, and his soccer-loving son. By-the-book Kate is trying to make sense of the real purpose of their mission, not knowing whom to trust. And beneath all of the moral chaos lies a pressing question: does the end justify the means? Sicario evokes memories of Steven Soderbergh's Oscar-winning Traffic—although this is more sinister and savage, delivering sheer brutality and suspense to maintain a sense of dread-filled anxiety. Recommended. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include the production featurettes “Stepping Into Darkness: The Visual Design” (17 min.), “Blunt, Brolin and Benicio: Portraying the Characters” (15 min.), “Battle Zone: The Origins” (14 min.), “A Pulse from the Desert: The Score” (6 min.), and trailers. Exclusive to the Blu-ray release are bonus DVD, digital, and UltraViolet copies of the film. Bottom line: a solid extras package for this Oscar-nominated thriller.] (S. Granger)