‘Sicario’ DVD Review: A Real Inside Look of Mexican Drug Cartels

Sicario takes you behind the scenes of a government operation busting Mexican drug cartels one person at a time.

In Spanish, sicario means hitman. FBI Agent Kate Macy (Emily Blunt) is recruited to be a part of an all-male team in charge of attacking a piece of a Mexican drug cartel.

Her fellow team members Alejandro (Benicio del Toro) and Matt (Josh Brolin) keep her in the dark for most of the movie. She’s left clueless in an operation where she should probably be informed of the danger or at least the objective. She continues to participate because she believes Matt and Alejandro are at least scratching the surface of the cartel world unlike her work back in Phoenix.

Director Denis Villeneuve takes you over the border into Mexico with the characters of Sicario. Like Kate, the audience is left in the dark. It’s almost as if we are a part of the operation. We don’t know what’s happening or who all these people are but we’re just watching and trying to piece everything together.

Villeneuve portrays the reality of the drug world with mutilated, hanging bodies on display around an area they invade in Juárez, Mexico.

We see short clips of a family that show the reality of drug cartels and the effect they have on families. The father pretends he has “work” when he is probably brutally killing people or selling drugs, the mother acts like nothing is happening, and the young son notices a large gun in the house.

Villeneuve chose to end the film with this exact family. As the son plays a game of soccer, the boys hear gunshots in the distance. The parents and kids stare away for a few moments and then go back to playing as if nothing happened.

DVD Extras: In “The Visual Design of Sicario”, Villenueve admits that the screenplay is what caught his eye as one of the most powerful he’s ever read. His goal was to have the film come across as reality to audience members. They did research as if they were doing a documentary with real life photos that they re-enacted into film.

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