Today I learned there is a chud read of this film, because of course there is.
Takes-that-miss-the-point aside, it's a good looking thriller that keeps a solid level of tension throughout, which already makes it exceptional for a relatively mainstream film. Denis don't miss
I like Denis V. and Taylor Sheridan and I thought Sicario was awesome. My take was that showed how steering into the militarization skid was creating all the monsterous hallmarks of war. Emily was chosen by Brolin because she was a door kicker, not a thinker like her partner. And the trauma of the opening sequence made her an easier target to meet the bureaucratic needs of the hawks. To me eyes, her character development was recognizing that she was never anything more than a pawn to be manipulated by psychos with no fucks to give about collateral damage.
I cannot describe how intensely disappointed I was in the sequel.
In a meta sense the Emily Blunt casting is awesome in a way that will never be appreciated by future generations. She was in 2015 still in the honeymoon phase of her Edge of Tomorrow role where she was lauded as the vanguard of Action Girl casting. So she's cast in the lead in Sicario deliberately as a false lead type of trick, where she's marketed as this badass Action Girl fed but actually she's a hopeless Fish Out Of Water Audience Surrogate who doesn't have the stomach in the least for what she's been conscripted into and in fact is so far out of her depth she doesn't realize how badly she's being manipulated until it's completely laid out to her.
That Edge of Tomorrow hype has faded now over the years and it's something extremely subtle that people who didn't live through it will realize unless it's told to them.
well, as a movie removed from any reality I recognize, it's fine.
spoiler
_all the nuance of the first was gone. the second felt like "what if it's like the first one, but Brolin is the good guy because AL QAEDA DO BE COMING ACROSS THE TEX MEX BORDER YALL"
I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, plot wise, and give me some critique but it was just played straight._
Great film, pretty incredible cinematography in particular. The shot of the strike team silhouetted against the evening sun and literally descending into the darkness as they enter the tunnel system is phenomenal.
