Sicario

Sicario establishes Denis Villeneuve as Canada’s most prominent director. It’s not quite as profound as his Incendies but it’s still remarkable. 

If he has an auteur theme it’s the loss of innocence in a jaw-dropingly corrupt world. His signature tone is a tightening tension that approaches the unbearable. He never softens the material at the end. 

Here two innocents are sucked into America’s corrupting war against the drug cartels. The black lawyer and blonde kidnapping squad cop witness slaughters beyond their apprehension and acceptance. The losers are families, from the lost wife and daughter Alejandro sets out to avenge, through the corrupt cop Silvio’s family, to the cartel boss’s sons and wife.

The most intimate human relations are trampled by the vicious gangs driven by greed. So, too, Kate nearly gets herself killed when her try for a one night stand tumbles her into the world of bought cops.  

The film’s overwhelming suspense serves its theme, the imminent threat of humanity turned into wolves. Alejandro’s prediction of a society of lawlessness and savagery earns the tension we feel throughout this experience. And it is an experience, not just a good story.

The several god’s eye view shots of the landscape paradoxically suggest this is a godless world. The shots bespeak man’s technology not a higher understanding. The aerials show a desiccated, arid, lifeless nature in which humanity is reduced to negligible, passing specks. They’re like Edward Burtynsky photos — the mangled and ruined nature man leaves in his wake. It’s eerie and nightmarish but with an awful beauty. Their deadness makes them an emblem of the characters’ soul. Even in the innocence of the kids’ soccer game the war lights up the background.

Kate doesn’t belong in this world. She signed up for a career that would restore family lives, recover taken members, not serve such wholesale destruction. But the CIA needs her to legitimize their acting on American soil. She serves as their “mule” the way the cartels deploy their carrier “mules.” She’s denied any will or knowledge beyond what they need to control her. Her directors make a point of denying her information, lest they lose control.

     Amazing that we still have innocence to lose. But we do. We keep finding hope that our humanity and morality will win out. We keep being reminded they don’t.