Benicio Del Toro tremendous in war-on-drugs drama ‘Sicario’
You wanna win the war on drugs? Find a way to get each cartel boss alone in a room, then have Benicio Del Toro glare at him. It won’t be long before the world’s supply of illicit substances dwindles to whatever weed Seth Rogen happens to be holding.
Del Toro is tremendous in “Sicario,” director Denis Villeneuve’s (“Prisoners”) gritty, murky look at Mexican cartels and the corruption on both sides of the border. As the former Juarez prosecutor turned Colombian operative known as Alejandro, Del Toro is as mesmerizing as he’s been since 2012’s border-hopping “Savages,” in which he portrayed a sadistic Mexican cartel enforcer. And that role was as good as he’d been since winning an Oscar for 2000’s “Traffic” as a Mexican cop caught up in the U.S. drug trade.
Del Toro isn’t being typecast. The performances differ greatly, as do the Mexican drug movies. But even if he were, with results like this, it would be worth it.
“Sicario” is ultimately the story of Arizona FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), who, after stumbling onto a cartel’s house of horrors in suburban Phoenix, is swept up into a black-ops task force involving the FBI, CIA, DEA, the Army’s Delta Force, dozens of heavily armed federales, even a couple of crusty old Texas Rangers.
They’re all under the command of Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), who claims to represent the Department of Defense but is every bit as shady as Alejandro. When Kate asks about the task force’s objective, he tells her it’s “to dramatically overreact.”
Basically, this entails invading Mexico, kidnapping the brother of a cartel leader out of a Nogales prison, surviving a sphincter-tightening standoff in gridlock on the Bridge of the Americas, then sitting back and watching the tracer fire and explosions.
Befitting its release date, “Sicario,” a Mexican term for a hit man, is a movie for grown folk. Easy answers are as hard to come by as heroes. Mutilated corpses hang from a Nogales overpass, and Kate’s death house discovery is gruesome enough to leave seasoned FBI agents retching uncontrollably. Still, it’s a relative Saturday afternoon in the park compared to the unrelenting horrors of Villeneuve’s “Prisoners.”
And, thanks to acclaimed director of photography Roger Deakins, an 11-time Oscar nominee, “Sicario” looks fantastic, from its sweeping vistas to it its blend of footage from drones, night-vision goggles and thermal-imaging cameras.
For all its ripped-from-the-headlines timeliness, though, “Sicario” is an actors’ movie.
Blunt, drawing upon the action hero steeliness she developed on “Edge of Tomorrow,” holds her own against the tidal waves of testosterone that never let you forget just how vulnerable she truly is.
Brolin, meanwhile, vacillates between a capable man of action and a caricature of flip-flops and lethargy. (Asked by a Ranger if he’s sober heading into Mexico, he offers a sardonic, “Will be by the time we get there.”)
Then there’s Del Toro’s turn as Alejandro. Simultaneously tragic and terrifying, it’s the type of subtly menacing star turn that should keep him busy throughout awards season.
Forget the billions of dollars worth of construction. The true cost of President Trump’s Great Wall of Mexico would be the end of performances like this.
— Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com. On Twitter: @life_onthecouch
