There’s a lot of skill and talent on display in Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario, which makes it a thoroughly enjoyable if entirely forgettable heart-pounding studio thriller. Emily Blunt stars as Kate, an FBI agent working in a kidnap recovery team who finds herself recruited for a special unit to track down and kill drug lords using unconventional methods. Leading the team is Matt (Josh Brolin), a CIA agent who plays everything close to his chest. He works with Alejandro (Benicio del Toro) whose affiliation is never quite defined.
Their goal is to neutralize the drug lords, no matter how many casualties happen along the way or how many rules of procedure they break. Kate disagrees with their methods, but she wants to see the mission through to get justice for the murders she’s witnessed. Johann Johannsen’s pulsating score keeps your blood pumping throughout — a huge departure from his innocuous Oscar-nominated work on The Theory of Everything. But the real star of the film may be cinematographer Roger Deakins, whose work here is both breathtaking and purposeful, a huge part of why the film remains thrilling even as its plot loses steam.
Sicario is now streaming on Hulu Plus.
