Sicario (2015)

★★★
Capsule Review

A deliberately slow pace is not the end all be all to building suspense. Sicario is a crime drama involving U.S. law enforcement and Mexican drug traffickers, and everything about it indicates a top end production. It has a stellar cast, a gifted director (Denis Villeneuve) and amazing cinematography. There are two masterful sequences. The film opens with a raid on a house with suspected human traffickers. Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), who participated in the raid, is then recruited to join a task force that is targeting a drug lord. Macer and her new comrades execute a tense infiltration into Ciudad Juárez to take custody of the drug lord's associate and bring him back over the border. Beyond these two scenes, the movie chugs along at a plodding pace with little else going for it except arguments between Kate and task force lead Matt Graver (Josh Brolin). Benicio del Toro also stars, but he also appeared in the superior crime/drug movie Traffic from 2000. This is a solid movie but not something I would revisit.

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