A Horror Story of the War on Drugs
Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario is a story about an FBI agent, Kate Mercer, and her spirited effort to make a difference in the war on drugs down near the Mexican/American boarder. Villeneuve puts in a valiant effort to recreate the harsh, uneasy, and hostile environment we are used to seeing that accommodates the drug violence in Latin America. We see these same environments in Breaking bad, Weeds and the Netflix series original Narcos. The encroaching Cartels south of the Rio Grande are posing an ever-greater threat on the southern states of the USA including Arizona, Texas, California, and New Mexico.
Kate Mercer is asked to join a special task force that will take out a major cartel boss. Kate’s recruiter, Matt Graver, who wears flip flops in a business setting, is sketchy and keeps Kate in the dark as to what their overall purpose is. Team leader, Alejandro, is an intense, quiet, shady individual with an even more peculiar and dark past.
Sicario’s camera work creates an atmosphere that is more creepy and scary than intense and battle stricken. It feels like a weird hybrid of a horror film and a war film. The opening scene of Kate and her SWAT team finding human carcasses in the walls of a house owned by cartel members set the standard of the sinister events that will proceed to happen throughout the movie. We get a few more tastes of this horror film feel when Kate is at home washing the blood off of her face and the scene when the camera switches into night vision and the team goes on their final mission into the caves. The final mission into the caves will really make the hair on your arms and legs stand up. It is one of those moments that give the sense of “something bad is going to happen and I can tell”. While nothing actually jumps out at the screen, the camera work of the night vision goggles is a brilliant choice in showing the intensity of the situation.
It is in the caves mission when Alejandro separates from the team and goes on his solo mission to infiltrate the home of cartel boss Alarcon. Kate follows Alejandro until he shoots her in the chest, knowing she’d be safe with her bullet proof vest, to stop her. It is the events following this incident that we find out a little more about who Alejandro is, and what his motives are behind the operation.
Denis Villeneuve is not a stranger to these dark, mysterious, and borderline horror films. His films, Prisoners (2013) and Enemy (2013), are perfect examples of the eerie, unstable and hair-raising atmosphere that is experienced during the film Sicario. It is human nature and human instinct to be afraid of the unknown. It is in our DNA. Villeneuve harnesses the ingredients that conjure up human fear and ingeniously throws them into his films.
Sicario is a movie that will keep your attention and, keep you thinking, keep you wincing, and keep you wondering and wanting more.
