Sicario (Review)

Sicario (2015)

There are certain films we do not think of as Christian because they contain lots of swearing, lots of violence, and they leave us feeling like we've been kicked in the gut. Then there are certain films that we can argue are pretty explicitly Christian because they contain lots of swearing, lots of violence, and they leave us feeling like we've been kicked in the gut.

Sicario is one of those films. It gets under your skin because it plays out its narrative slowly and surely with a fiery intensity, and then sucker punches you for being naive enough to even entertain the thought of a happy ending. It is cynical and unflinchingly brutal. The Ecclesiastes, if you will, of action-thrillers, reminding us that there is one fate for both the righteous and the wicked—death.

This kind of cynicism ensures that Sicario works on the same visceral level as the old film noirs of classic cinema, though the color pallet here is decidedly different. A teacher once asked me what color I saw as I read The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene. The answer was yellow. I had flashbacks to that novel when watching Sicario. Just like the film noirs make extensive use of lighting, color plays a central role in this film. Yellow permeates Sicario in various shades, painting a canvas that is, at turns, brilliant and blazing, pale and sickly.

Directed by Denis Villeneuve, the film is a masterclass of filmmaking in that it accomplishes what I consider to be the holy grail of cinema: the ability to marry image with theme. There are certain filmmakers who have this astonishing ability to really capture the essence of a story in a single shot, and then do it over and over again throughout the movie. Take Raiders of the Lost Ark, for example, and the scene at the beginning in which Indiana Jones first steps out of the shadows. And again when Jones and the diggers, racing to uncover the lost Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis, unearth the Well of Souls. Jones is silhouetted against the blazing sun, the diggers are singing their foreign tune, and the scene has forever been seared into my mind. In that moment, I know exactly how I'm supposed to feel: entranced, exotic, transported to this other time, this other place. The scene is brief, but captures the essence of what the Indiana Jones films are about: adventure. And I'm left wondering just what is about to be uncovered, and what mysteries are yet to be discovered beneath those forgotten sands. This, I believe, is a hallmark of a truly great filmmaker. And Villeneuve has this ability in spades.

There is a sequence in Sicario when protagonist Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) finds herself in a caravan traveling across the border into Ciudad Juárez as part of a special task force assembled by the Department of Justice. She is as much in the dark about the operational details as the viewer. All she knows is that they are going to extradite a high-ranking member of the Sonora Cartel. As the caravan ventures into Mexico, wide, sweeping shots of the caravan weaving through desolate, dangerous streets reinforce the theme of isolation and emptiness that runs throughout the film. Macer, though surrounded by allies in the caravan, truly is alone in enemy territory. And I could practically feel the loneliness, the tension, as I watched the scene play out.

Macer is the viewer's window into this dangerous world. We know as much as she does about what's going on at any given point in time. Part of the film's tension comes in her learning that she has been intentionally left out of the loop as to what her special task force is actually doing when it comes to the drug war. Headed up by Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), a cocky specialist with an affinity for flip-flops, the task force continues to take bigger and bigger risks that clash with Macer's morals. Like us, she begins asking, essentially, "How far is too far?" She finds an unexpected ally in a mysterious man also attached to the task force, Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro). There are certain actors who are born to play particular roles, and del Toro is perfectly cast as the wolfish Gillick, whose quiet, soft-spoken demeanor belies a deadly intent. At one point, Gillick suggests that Macer is like his own daughter, and we, like Macer, foolishly believe that she has formed some kind of bond with this silent titan of a man. Of course, by story's end, the truth is revealed. Gillick is exposed as the stone cold killer that he is, a man who is more than just a part of the world Macer is looking to bring down, but is, in fact, one of the men responsible for establishing that world's perverted status quo. And to Macer's horror, it turns out her own government is working with this man, to establish an older, more evenhanded cartel with which deals can be cut, and understandings can be reached. And when Macer threatens to tell the world of this perverse plan, it is Gillick himself who threatens her life until she gives in, and signs off on the documentation stating that all the task force did was completely legal and within the confines of the law.

Sicario is an exercise in futility. It perfectly embodies the Christian doctrine of reprobation, which tells us that bad people can do good things (like when Gillick at one point saves Macer's life), and still be bad people because inside they are rotten to the core. And bad people ultimately get what they deserve, even if it looks like they get away clean in the end. Gillick walks away with his life and government-approved freedom, despite murdering an entire family (including two young, innocent children) while the family sits down to dinner. Of course, we have spent the entire movie learning that he is empty inside, a shell of a human being. He might think he's walking away clean, but we know he's just as dirty as the bad men he's spent the movie killing. Macer compromises her morals and lets him get away, and then neglects to shoot him when given the chance. It's enough to make us rage at the screen.

It is telling that the first time I viewed Sicario, I walked away feeling cheated. I didn't like the ending. It took several rewatches and a lot of processing before I came around to thinking it's one of the best movies to come out in the past twenty years. There is a kind of dark poetry to the way the whole affair plays out, and writer Taylor Sheridan cracks the hardest storytelling code of all by crafting a story that ends on a wholly unexpected but somehow inevitable note. Having watched the film, when you go back and watch it again, you can see that the ending was etched in stone from the movie's opening moments, yet the quality of the movie-making somehow keeps you under its spell to the point where the ending takes you completely by surprise—not because it's unpredictable, but because it's just so unrelentingly brutal. Sicario is a dark film about dark things, about twisted motivations and lies masquerading as cheap and easy truth. But it is one of those films that allows you to emerge on the other side cleansed, having faced an evil so great and undiluted that our morality is jumpstarted. It makes you shake your fist at the screen and cry out for justice to be done.

And that in and of itself is a victory. We are slapped awake, and we go back to our complicated lives having had our sense of right and wrong restored. We have seen a great and terrible darkness, and that makes us appreciate the light all the more.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado (Review)

Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018)

There is a rather popular saying that goes something like this, "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." Regardless of who said it or when it was first used, there is a kind of perverse way of looking at this in which one asks, "Just how bad can things really get if good people do nothing?" Sicario: Day of the Soldado will happily provide at least one answer to that question.

I consider the original Sicario to be one of the finest films to come out of 2015. Sporting three powerhouse performances by Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro, and Josh Brolin, and penned by Texan actor, screenwriter, and director Taylor Sheridan, Sicario does what only the best films of the old fashioned noir genre can do and really digs its fingers into your guts. It's dark, relentless, and utterly captivating as you watch these different people make all these moral compromises. And it ends in something of a squared circle, a testament to Sheridan's skill as a writer of a kind of dark, noir poetry. So when I first learned that there was going to be a sequel, I was skeptical, to say the least. The first one's ending was somehow resolute in its irresolution. And it worked.

But the truth is, Sicario: Day of the Soldado is hardly a sequel at all. Kate Macer, Emily Blunt's character in the original, is nowhere to be seen and, to my recollection, not even mentioned. At one point during my viewing, I remember thinking this movie was more of a reimagining of the first one, the way events might have played out had Macer not been present. After some further reflection, I think this is probably a good way to approach the film. Because Macer was the moral center of Sicario, and was the audience's vehicle into the film's world. Day of the Soldado, on the other hand, completely does away with that vehicle altogether and drops the audience into a story of amoral men fighting a shadow war on amoral terms. Sicario begins by immediately establishing an emotional connection with Macer. Day of the Soldado opens by rapidly showing a series of disturbing scenes featuring suicide bombers, before reintroducing Josh Brolin's character from the first film. It's horrific and shocking, but there's no real emotional connection to the characters. There's no backstory, no time spent catching up with the characters and telling you what they've been doing in the in-between.

Now, one can choose to deal with this in one of two ways. On one hand, it can be argued that the lack of emotional investment in a character like Macer hinders this film (which, to an extent, is true). On the other, however, and this is the position I'm more inclined to take, the lack of emotional investment is exactly the point the film is making. Most movies ask you to care about a protagonist; Soldado really doesn't care what you think about Alejandro Gillick (del Toro) or Matt Graver (Brolin). In fact, if you've seen the original, you know that both men are morally bankrupt. Gillick is a thug who kills out of revenge, and Graver is an emotional void who just follows his orders. To Sheridan's credit, he doesn't waste time trying to get you to care about characters who are inherently bad people. He just drops you into their world, and proceeds to let things unspool—and boy do they unspool.

The narrative really takes off when Graver and Gillick concoct a plan to kidnap the daughter of a cartel kingpin in a false flag operation (again, these are not standup individuals), all in an attempt to start a war between rival cartels. The abduction occurs, and the girl, Isabela Reyes (Isabela Moner), is taken. But she's not an idiot, and it's pretty evident that she knows something is amiss from the jump. And Moner really sells the role well. It's kind of stunning, actually, how well she acts through these really traumatic scenes. The movie really rises or falls on her ability to carry these scenes. Of course, the thing no one anticipates is the connection Gillick will form with her because she reminds him of his own daughter, who was killed by the cartels in years past. And when the United States government orders the mess that Graver and Gillick create to be cleaned up, Gillick becomes bound and determined to protect Isabela, no matter the cost. And the cost is great.

Whereas the first film shows the cost of compromise on the inner parts of a human being and the breakdown of conviction, Day of the Soldado shows the fallout of that compromise in an external sense. This films works more as a thematic continuation or "spiritual successor" rather than a direct sequel. If Sicario warns us that things will get messy if we're not careful and we compromise our moral convictions and abandon virtue, Soldado shows us just how messy things can really get. More than this, it shows us the consequences of choice. The first film ends with Gillick threatening Macer's life in order to make sure the war crimes and moral compromises committed by Graver and his team go unpunished by the powers that be. Day of the Soldado offers Gillick a chance at redemption by saving the life of this innocent girl whose only connection to the world of the drug trade is having a reprehensible human being for a father. If Sheridan was at all concerned with sentimentalizing redemption, he would have Gillick sacrifice himself in some kind of heroic fashion to save her.

But, as the first film smacked you for thinking it could end happily, Soldado backhands you for thinking Gillick will be granted an honorable death. To be fair, Gillick is willing to lay down his life for Isabela. But it's hardly a sexy death. He ends up blindfolded and tied down in the middle of a desolate desert, where he is unceremoniously shot in the face and left to rot. It's a jarring thing to see, the supposed "hero" of the story gunned down while groveling in the dirt. A brutal reminder that there are no heroes in this world. Only bad men getting what they deserve.

When Graver finally rescues the girl, despite his orders to kill her, he opts to save her life and place her in witness protection. He, too, had formed an emotional attachment—to Gillick, as a friend. And when Gillick is shot, it's the kick of injustice needed to shake Graver out of his emotional obsolescence and make him care about something other than himself or his mission. So it's actually the violence that ends up being somewhat redemptive. It's not the girl Gillick saves by laying down his life; instead, it's his friend, the man who had just been given orders to kill Gillick himself to ensure the mess is cleaned up.

But perhaps the most interesting storytelling decision of all, however implausible it may be, is the choice to resurrect Gillick. The bullet, it turns out, passed through his face, but didn't kill him. The final leg of the movie plays like something out of a horror film, as a badly wounded Gillick murders his way back from the brink of death. Dying alone in the desert is, apparently, not quite the fate this man deserves. Like Raoul Silva says in Skyfall, life clings to this bad man "like a disease." To die at this point, in this way, alone in the desert, would be too easy. Justice on a cosmic scale would not be served.

In similar fashion to the original Sicario, the key to watching Day of the Soldado lies in paying close attention to the character for whom the film seems named. "Sicario," as I understand it, is Spanish for "hitman." In the original film, it's clear that Alejandro Gillick is the titular "sicario." In this film, though, the question is who embodies the "soldado." "Soldado" roughly translates from Spanish to "soldier." And the "soldado" of this film is a young Mexican-American named Miguel Hernandez, a "coyote" who smuggles people across the border. When the film isn't following the exploits of Gillick or Graver, it follows Miguel's descent into the world of human smuggling. It is Miguel who ultimately pulls the trigger that appears to kill Gillick in order to fulfill his role as a "soldado" in a Mexican gang. Graver is redeemed ever so slightly, at the cost of a young man completely losing his innocence by choosing to end the life of another. Again, these films are relentlessly brutal, but this is further evidence of Sheridan's knack for a kind of dark poetry. He always gives his characters a shot at redemption—the issue is that they hardly ever take it, and when they do, it turns out that shrugging off past sins is not as easy as one might think. This, of course, is truer to life than anything else, and truer to Christ's own words concerning the cost of following him. It's a hard lesson to learn that the straight and narrow is the harder path to walk, due to the carrying of one's cross daily and the continual dying to oneself on that cross, which is so often glossed over in favor of finding a vague sense of "healing" by visiting the foot of Christ's cross whenever life becomes too inconvenient. Graver overcomes his crooked nature, but it takes more than a man seemingly dying, it takes him going against everything he thinks is right. The truth is that one man does, in fact, die the moment Gillick is shot—it's just not Gillick. It's Graver. Resurrection, then, does not belong to Gillick, but to Graver, who denies himself and saves Isabela.

The final moments of Soldado leap forward a year, and reveal that Gillick has tracked down Miguel with the intentions of recruiting him to be a "sicario." Of course, the smart thing for the kid to do would be to walk away from this ghost of a man, scared to the point where he leaves it all behind. More than this, if Gillick were a virtuous person, he would use his presence to try and scare the kid out of a twisted life rather than try to recruit him. But, that's not the moral universe Sheridan has established here. And it's certainly not true to Gillick's character. The screen goes black before we learn how Miguel responds.

Soldado, I think, does suffer from not sitting under the same director as Sicario, Denis Villeneuve. That's not to say that director Stefano Sollima does a bad job; on the contrary, the film is beautifully shot and still a very well-made film. But Villeneuve is a brilliant filmmaker in that he can marry image and theme perfectly. Soldado borrows a lot of its visual cues from the original, but there was never a moment where the sheer scope of a particular shot left me exhilarated like certain shots in the first one did. Taylor Sheridan continues to be one of my favorite writers, and at this point I'll watch anything he's even remotely associated with.

Overall, Sicario: Day of the Soldado works best as a thematic continuation of the previous film. The original ended with Kate Macer compromising on her convictions and letting the bad men get away. She was the good person who chose to do nothing. Soldado shows the ramifications of what happens when the bad men go running around unchecked, and how messy things can be when people who have closed themselves off to emotions get blindsided by them. That being said, I cannot recommend Day of the Soldado as eagerly as I would Sicario. The first film demonstrates the doctrine of reprobation well, and leaves you with a sense of hopelessness that can actually be redemptive. And while I don't believe Soldado revels in the amoral muck of death and destruction it depicts (and is actually all too real in the drug world today), the lack of Macer's convictions to remind us that what Gillick and Graver are doing down in Mexico is wrong leaves Day of the Soldado at risk of coming to be viewed as just another action-thriller, albeit a decidedly well-made one.

I've only seen Soldado once. It took multiple viewings before I came around to liking Sicario as much as I do. Perhaps the same will apply to Soldado once it is released for personal viewing. The problem is that I have little desire to see it again. Once is enough for this one, I think. From what I understand, Taylor Sheridan has planned a trilogy of Sicario films. If that is the case, then it's likely that, after the release of the third one, I'll be revising my opinion of Sicario: Day of the Soldado. And if Sheridan's fingers type up the script, I'll be there on opening night.