Our man at Cannes Mike D’Angelo has something of a reputation for being difficult to please. Imagine our excitement, then, when his report from the Croisette trumpeted the arrival of a “radically subversive” film that left him “unexpectedly blown away.” He had come to sing the praises of Denis Villeneuve’s gritty (literally, the trailer’s full of dirt and grit) drug-cartel thriller Sicario, which premiered back at the festival in May but will reach the fair shores of the United States on September 18 for a limited release, and go wide a week later. Awash with praise for lead actors Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, and Benicio Del Toro, as well as the film’s defiantly unconventional approach to character, his praise immediately bumped this film up The Dissolve’s collective most-anticipated list.
Following through on much-loved performances in Edge Of Tomorrow and Into The Woods, Blunt stars as an FBI agent assigned to assist a team of operatives with a rather murky background. As her immediate supervisor, Brolin might be Department of Defense, he might be CIA, or he could be paramilitary. Del Toro turns up the menace as the hired gun also aiding the team. Their objective is more clear-cut, with the team cooperating to dismantle the extensive drug cartels choking out Mexico. Both international borders and personal boundaries are crossed, and Blunt’s helpless onlooker gets caught in an ethical and occasionally literal crossfire. Villeneuve’s previous films Enemy and Prisoners both drew praise upon their respective releases in 2013, but Sicario appears to be some next-level work. Take a look at the trailer:
The trail of the tape
Title: Sicario
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Screenwriter: Taylor Sheridan
Cast: Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, Benicio Del Toro, Jon Bernthal
Release date: September 18, 2015
The entire trailer in one line of dialogue: “Nothing makes sense to your American ears, but in the end, you will understand.”
The entire trailer in one screengrab:
The indelible images come fast and furious in this trailer. The title for most arresting clip has to be a toss-up between Blunt’s blood-cleansing symbolic shower of sadness, or the traffic jam shootout, already unbearably tense even in this diluted form. The line for advance tickets starts behind me.