Sicario (2015)

It's an occasional phenomenon, the good movie, that you appreciated, that your glad you saw, that you recognize as good, but which on some level you didn't enjoy, you didn't like. It's hard to rate this one, its legitimately quite good, its well acted, well written, well shot, even has something to say. The kind of things I appreciate in a film. Heck its written by Taylor Sheridan and directed by Denis Villeneuve, they are both great separately they should be great together, and they are, but I don't feel that I need to see this again.

I didn't particularly enjoy seeing it, but I recognize its an achievement. It's also a bit of an odd mush. It's extremely realistic, its a bit like those docu films that they used to do in the 40's and 50's, I've long had mixed reaction to those, they made me feel too detached, simultaneously not enough documentary and not enough drama. I think that's its, Sicario (which is about the drug war by the way I should probably mention that), it's a lot of boredom with streaks of brilliance. With the occasional powerful scene or vided image. The best sequence in the film, for me, was probably the U.S. caravan in Mexico to pick up the drug big wig, its an extradition he's being handed over by Mexican authorities to the Americans. So you have all these vehicles, with American military personal, with guns, invited into a foreign country we are at piece with, and ready to shoot any Mexican citizen on their own soil who might try and interfere with the transition. There's something unsettling, odd about that, it might be the only real way to work it, but it just feels off and wrong on some level.

There is a moment where that caravan is traveling through a shitty neighborhood and we see some guys playing racquetball against the side of an abandoned, half collapsed building, then the craven turns a corner and there are dismembered corpses hung form an overpass, a warning to those who would challenge the cartels. All of this is based on real things that happen, the FX series The Bridge dealt with a lot of this kind of stuff as well, that was a good show, it did a good job conveying it, but this I think was even more intense. Yet also at times more boring, I guess that is how being at the front lines of the drug war must be, like solders in the trenches, nothing, nothing, nothing and then sheer terror. It's quite an achievement, but its not a fun watch, it's vaguely off putting in a way I can't quite untangle (because I really like some seemingly off putting movies). I'm glad I saw it, but I don't think I'm going to want to see it again. ***1/2