Sicario Review

The convoy sequence is the film in miniature. Nothing happens for a long time. Traffic stops on the bridge, Roger Deakins holds on wing mirrors and the shapes of men in the cars ahead, Johann Johannsson lays a low pulse under it that behaves more like pressure than music, and by the time the shooting starts we have been braced for four minutes. Villeneuve repeats that shape all night, ending in a tunnel raid shot in night vision and thermal where the audience loses the geography exactly as Kate does.

Emily Blunt plays her as a competent professional who is systematically stripped of standing, the film's most divisive choice, since the protagonist is sidelined by design and the last act belongs to Benicio del Toro's Alejandro. We think the design holds, because the point is that she was brought along as a signature rather than as an agent. The script is functional rather than quotable, and a subplot about a Mexican police officer's family telegraphs its ending. As dread engineering, though, this is close to the state of the art.