SICARIO by denis villeneuve, starring emily blunt, benicio del toro and josh brolin

http://www.joblo.com/newsimages1/sicario-trailer-fbpic.jpg

anyone seen this yet?

going to myself when it comes to boston tomorrow. i liked prisoners well enough despite its OTT moments; this one seems to be operating on another level entirely in terms of dread and moral ambiguity. (still need to check out incendies and enemy.) reviews are fairly superlative though i recall hearing the cannes reception was mixed (not that that's a big surprise)

found this image from one of the posters v striking
http://static1.squarespace.com/static/53323bb4e4b0cebc6a28ffa2/t/55b7ab82e4b005725c9891bd/1438100363856/?format=750w

lotta critics i trust thought this was bullshit

Looks good but I'll probably wait till it's streaming or on DVD, as I read Don Winslow's The Cartel not long ago so am kinda burned out on the subject.

villeneuve is kind of a crappy filmmaker BUT his last two films have had some of the most stunning cinematography i've seen in contemporary movies. so if that's yr thing...

roger deakins IIRC

deakins did prisoners and this, yeah.

xxp reading the cartel, immensely draining as it was, is what started my current deep dive into cartel/drug war fiction and nonfiction that has yet to let up, lol. not to mention i'm of the opinion that the war on drugs is perhaps the worst fallacy/crime perpetrated on this country's people by its government, so always interested in how it is examined and portrayed. have a strong feeling this one ain't exactly pro.

My local critic gave it 3.5 but Villeneuve strikes me as too fucking ponderous.

I haven't seen a Hollywood flick in weeks, so I guess I'll go with Damon's outer space drag act.

actually some decent choices this weekend

keep forgetting this was done by the director of Prisoners which I really dug (and Enemy which was... interesting at least), so i will probably give it a shot sooner or later. trailer didn't enthuse me though.

i guess i'm a little skeptical of fashionably pessimistic movies about the drug war, not because they are wrong, but because there's a long line of em going back (at least) to "traffic"

though i guess this is equally an allegory for the excesses of the 'war on terror'

i should have said, there's a long line of em going back (at least) to "traffic"... and none of them are particularly good.

traffic is utterly remarkable as a filmmaking achievement and...kind of a mess otherwise, although i do stand by the benicio portion bc it doesn't really have the problems of the rest of the film

Ha – the del Toro part is the drag. Maybe cuz sentimentality about baseball leaves me cold.

well it's not a terrible film... it has a lot going for it... political sophistication is probably not one of those things.

re. filmmaking, something about the mannered "realism" (the weird combo of documentary-like camera style and pictorialism) makes the film somewhat badly (as with other soderbergh films of that era as well as stuff like "syriana").

oops i meant to say that the particular mix of documentary camera style and pictorialism (along with the clumsy star acting) really dates the film.

i mean it felt kind of modish and dated even when it came out IMO

Enemy was garbage - and the trailer for this one gave off a heavy Bigelow vibe.

def prioritize Villeneuve's Canadian college massacre feature Polytechnique, and Enemy

when these guys go Hollywood, there's often nothin worse

Emily Blunt makes me want to try this but I'll probably pass until it's on Netflix. She was great in Edge of Tomorrow and kind of awful in everything else, thinking maybe action is her zone.

when these guys go Hollywood, there's often nothin worse

not sure i see a huge change in his work when he went hollywood. often the hollywood films just expose the flaws that were there all along and just disguised by "indie" cred and a patina of authenticity.

and there are probably as many 'indie' directors who only got really good when they went mainstream as there are folks whose talent shriveled up on contact with a multi-million-dollar budget.

also i keep wanting to insert an "o" into emily blunt's last name. shouldn't it be emily blOunt?

xp milo also pretty good in Looper

insert joke about inserting something into emily blunt

oh dear

I saw this, loved the cinematography and the soundtrack. The performances of the three main characters were also very good. But it feels like something is missing. I can't really name any specific flaws to this movie but somehow I came out of it unimpressed. I remember feeling the same way about Prisoners.

I guess it's the way everything gets wrapped up so neatly, a movie in this kind of setting should be more chaotic.

yeah i think that whole post is otm.

there are a few very effective scenes but in a weird way it's almost as if everything gets explained too much.

feels like a missed opportunity, and i wish more of it had been set in juarez.

also im kinda over movies and other media that portray the US intelligence apparatus as somehow all-knowing and in total command of their actions--the real horror would be realizing that they dont know what the fuck they are doing.

which was the case for most of the Cold War, coming to head during Watergate.

it's p clear they still don't know what the fuck they're doing

also im kinda over movies and other media that portray the US intelligence apparatus as somehow all-knowing and in total command of their actions--the real horror would be realizing that they dont know what the fuck they are doing.

― ryan, Friday, October 2, 2015 1:33 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk isn't the whole point of this flick that what the FBI-DEA-black ops squad is doing is ultimately counterproductive/has nothing to do with justifiable law enforcement practices? that seems to be the vibe even in the trailers. but i'll know when i see it tonight or tomorrow i suppose

it was written by this dude, who bailed on Sons of Anarchy to perhaps focus on writing and not being on terrible tv shows.

http://41.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m91of5NlYy1rpat8ho1_500.jpg

no that totally is the point! it's not really a criticism of the movie but I tend to think the larger public isn't really challenged by those ideas. they expect, maybe even want, for the government to be willing to fudge the rules in the interest of "security." so it's a bit of cake having and eating too when films portray such organizations as shady but nearly omnipotent. feels more like a covert worship of power than a critique of it. just a vibe I get.

well yea thats the eternal debate over bigelow's last two flicks. personally i do think you can depict the viciousness and moral quandaries of deeds done by governments on film without endorsing them by simple virtue of creating that depiction, but many things try and fail.

along similar lines of sicario's subject matter, i think the show NARCOS does a good job of depiction-not-endorsement, often in intentional opposition to the line of thinking its american narrator is occasionally pushing

yeah i dont want to say "depiction is endorsement"--i guess what im saying (poorly) is that movies like this misjudge what it is they think they are depicting: it's not an outlaw security state but one operating exactly as its supposed to and with the tacit endorsement of the public.

probably impossible to talk about this more in depth until more people have seen the movie, but the revelation about a particular character would have been so much cooler if we were left to infer it rather than having another character walk us through it.

saw this last night and don't have a ton of ready #analysis bc I'm still overwhelmed and drained by it

I think it is saying that these government operations take place with the tacit support (typically via ignorance) of the public, and that these war-of-attrition back and forth escalations will continue on both sides as long as drugs are viewed as a battleground rather than a public issue (although obviously there's no mouthpiece character to voice the potential solution of legalization/treatment, bc even the best-intentioned characters here think enforcement can be accomplished in an above-board manner)

*public health issue

someone send me a copy of the cartel so i don't have to buy the gd hardback thanks

The catch-all justification for this kind of voyeuristic, seen-through-our-fingers tourism is that “this is the way it is,” which is also the rationale for Matt and Alejandro—the mindset that when things are this bad, anything goes. But Sicario doesn’t truly get inside the mixture of despair and outrage that this situation invites. Instead, the film exploits it, and leaves beautiful, befuddled Emily Blunt hypnotized by it, a stand-in for viewers who presumably want their eyes opened to the abject aspects of the drug war, and, if possible, widened in vicarious excitement. Sicario gives us plenty to look at, and yet the only thing it really illustrates is how hackneyed its maker’s motivations really are. Villeneuve is a terrific director—a youngish master. He may also be a genuine, mercenary sell-out before his time. This grimly beautiful movie is really very ugly.

http://reverseshot.org/reviews/entry/2098/sicario

"exploitative" in 2015 more often than not - "I think this movie has politics/worldviews I find ugly bc it depicts horrific situations as well as ppl whose worldviews about said situations are ugly and doesn't explicitly say 'this is horrible omg'"

ok that's a bit strong/an overly blanket statement on my part but like what do reviewers who object to movies like this in that matter actually want, some awkward third act stand against institutionalized militarized corruption?

i will say tho that the level of violence in ciudad juarez has dropped considerably since the 2008-2011 period of all-out slaughter - 2014 had over 400 homicides in stark contrast to the 1,900+ murders in 2011, for example. and the movie is depicting a world more in line with the 2008-2011 period.

Sicario gives us plenty to look at, and yet the only thing it really illustrates is how hackneyed its maker’s motivations really are. Villeneuve is a terrific director—a youngish master. He may also be a genuine, mercenary sell-out before his time. This grimly beautiful movie is really very ugly.

that's pretty much villeneuve's MO in his indie and mainstream films, wherever (or even if) you are inclined to draw the line between those two things.

honestly i feel similarly about the artier gus van sant, who is similarly peddling "important" topical subjects but really is just vampirishly depicting all manner of cruelty, martyrdom, etc. for shits n giggles.

i think Villeneuve is less of a serious blowhard than Van Sant, if for no other reason than that audience middle-finger ending to Enemy

Yes, I def prefer my vampirishly depicted cruelty w/out any important topical subject matters getting in the way

At least Van Sant's movies are shorter.

this was so boring. nothing happened

beautiful stupid movie sounds are amazing worth catching despite lines spoken by snoozing cast

this was a good, if unoriginal film, but i really hated how it seemed to basically just underline everything to do with drugs, cartels, and south america as 'you wont ever understand.. so why even bother?' or 'why should we even bother trying to help you make better sense of it? better instead to simply make you believe nothing makes sense and then you can just write it all off lazily and neatly'. so fuck this film for that. emily blunt was quite good though. del toro was also good though also irritatingly not really made much of until the end. it was an effective device, to have the audience as much in the dark as blunt and her partner, but the way they/us never really learnt anything i think, while good for a kind of sinister/foggy atmosphere, just leant to something that was kind of complacent.

What in all of that tallies with yr assertion that this was a 'good movie'

in the sense that SV is a good director, and seems to be good with actors, with genre, just not sure what he wants to say, if anything. probably nothing really - perhaps hes just better suited to directing than wanting to impart anything of his own ideas, which might make this from upthread -"He may also be a genuine, mercenary sell-out before his time" sort of redundant. maybe hes just another young modern director whose quest is simply to build a body of work without caring what that body really says/represents etc.

actually, okay, while i admire the film for being a decent enough 'woe is a fbi/police agent's life' thriller, i actually really fucking hate everything else about it.

I don't share yr understanding of what a good director is. It seems to describe a person employed in making bad, bad movies.

this was a good movie

this thing is entertaining and even thrilling moment to moment, but man is it loaded with implausibilities.

I mean the whole movie is this "serious," "gritty" know-something-ish thriller with political overtones, then in the final 20 minutes del Toro goes to Mexico and it becomes a james bond film.

also the "cut to mexican cop's morning routine and interactions with his son" thing is so half-assed. We get it, Villeneuve, you're trying to make clear the human lives caught in the crossfire, but you obviously don't give a shit about this guy at all, and it totally undercuts any point you were trying to make.

i mean, at least put something compelling in those sequences, or even some element of mystery. It's clear from the first scene that this guy is going to be killed, but man his scenes are so indifferently written and directed.

also, this is funny: https://twitter.com/davechensky/status/646701193268297728

so it's a bit of cake having and eating too when films portray such organizations as shady but nearly omnipotent. feels more like a covert worship of power than a critique of it. just a vibe I get.

― ryan, Friday, October 2, 2015 11:09 AM (4 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is otm, ultimately the federal forces in this movie are basically 80s action movie heroes.

"also the "cut to mexican cop's morning routine and interactions with his son" thing is so half-assed. We get it, Villeneuve, you're trying to make clear the human lives caught in the crossfire, but you obviously don't give a shit about this guy at all, and it totally undercuts any point you were trying to make.

i thought that was more to show that in mexico, everyone is involved with drugs, even the cops! its just a lawless land, etc etc. the film just wants you to do a big shrug basically, even as it adopts the Gritty tone of Telling it Like It is.

I saw Ramin Bahrani's 99 Homes today, and it's obviously on a different topic, but it's just everything Sicario should be. Exiting thriller tropes to tell important political story, but with everything always being clear, and always keeping sight of the human stories. It's implausible, sure, but clearly so.

Sicario is just stupid. What on earth does the ending even mean? So the columbians are willing to take over distribution, sure, I get that, but able? That is just dumb. And the police are running around saying how important it is to fuck things up for the cartels, but nobody ever mentions that they could just, y'know, legalize it. Basically everyone in the film is a moron, which is ok, but then the film also is straining to be 'important' without the slightest of ideas to back it up.

nobody ever mentions that they could just, y'know, legalize it

i mean, no one in this movie suggests legalization bc little to no people in that type of law enforcement believe in it publicly. perhaps for some that's only because holding such a position in public is political suicide in the U.S., but whatever the reason, that is not a thing that's on the table. of all the things that are inarguably and arguably implausible about sicario, its lack of a public policy debate about the pros and cons of legalization is not one of them.

The actual worst part of this movie is it's blind subscription to the "Torture: It ALWAYS works" theory of law enforcement.

x-post: I do realize that, but the film fucks up the plausibility anyhow... And this is not about realism, this is about the argument of the film being stupid, and ways that would make it less stupid. If not a law-member, then perhaps giving the word to someone other than the police at some point. As it is, the film follows narrow-minded people running around in circles and doing stupid violent shit, but I still get the feeling that it's meant to be 'important' somehow.

Like, it seems to me the point of the film is 'you can't imagine what we have to do to solve this problem!' and my reaction is 'um, actually I kinda can...' So, y'know, it's a failure of subject matter, probably.

lol

Give me the tools and I'll Danish the job

He. Drugs are illegal in Denmark as well, though.

I stand by the pun

I'm trying to work the Veep croissant gif in here somehow, but I'm not sure if it works.

The actual worst part of this movie is it's blind subscription to the "Torture: It ALWAYS works" theory of law enforcement.

Torture is used as a deus ex machina by lazy scriptwriters, because it is hard to think of a realistic way to effect the timely acquisition of secret information. It doesn't matter that torture doesn't work very well in real life so long as the plot moves briskly and audiences are carried along.

this is otm, ultimately the federal forces in this movie are basically 80s action movie heroes.

you saw a very different movie than i did. overall it was not very good, but the way the actors arced their performances from "roguish loose cannon" to "creepy, amoral murderer" is really going to stick with me. think of the Delta platoon leader saying rapey shit to one of the protagonists ("just lie back and let it happen" ... not the first time he's said that). or think of how differently the border crossing ambush goes if this is actually an 80s action movie. i thought this movie was super disturbing.

I think, tbf, you were actually watching a different movie

i wish i'd seen your movie, the one i saw depressed the hell out of me

i loved Enemy, tis wasnt as good but i got horny every time emily blunt got roughed up

villeneueve doesnt remind me of van sant, i dont see him pretentious at all, he just wants to make cool exciting thrillers with pizzazz, and he does that like every time... he's not trying to place himself in a lineage w/bela tarr and alan clarke

A banal idea executed with style and shrewd choices, worn down by the didactic script.

Ya

I'm pretty much with Edelstein on this:
http://www.vulture.com/2015/09/movie-review-sicario.html

Only trouble with Brolin is he kept reminding me of Dennis Miller.

wow. literally half of this movie is variations on Blunt looking confused, anxious, or distrusting:

http://i.imgur.com/NgCZ5e7.jpg

for the "lead" character, she sure has little to say. Every time there's dialog between characters they show her instead of who's speaking ?!?!

That Edelstein review was on point, I think.
The movie's constant oppressive dread and beautiful shooting more than justified its flaws to me.

Just seen this. That was Sense of Doubt from Heroes, wasn't it?

No idea what to make of it politically or morally, I thought it was a very good horror movie.

I thought the one who went over to the mansion was a bit too cool and good, and it might have been better if the story was that he cocked up because it was a nutjob plan in the first place.

the way the actors arced their performances from "roguish loose cannon" to "creepy, amoral murderer" is really going to stick with me.

Agree with this especially re: the mansion guy's American mate or handler or whoever he was.

And very subtle signposting with badman cowboy cop in the bar scene - I mean I knew he was up to no good by the way he looked at them but I thought he was just looking for trouble generally.

I saw Miss Bala the other day. There's, like, at least 3 Mexican films that does what this piece of crap does so much better. Probably much more, I haven't seen that many.

Might look that one up, what are some others? I did feel that - like, I'm not sure I should be sitting here soaking in American thrillerised takes on the cartel situation, should be paying attention to what the Mexicans make of it

Heli is a really stark and tough look at the madness, 600 Miles is a bit more americanized, with Tim Roth as the American lead! He is pretty good in it. Those were the other two I was thinking of. All of them include actual Mexicans in the film in ways less pathetic than the guard in Sicario. It's films depicting a warscape, with people trying to get by, not the wasteland that Sicario revels in.

Rather good movie.

The del Toro revenge stuff had me thinking this movie doubles as an allegory of the SOCOM/Shia/Sunni snafu. Need to rescreen anyway bcz Deakins <3

oh I was referring to Hell or High Water, written by Taylor Sheridan. Sicario is dreary.

why was everyone so big on Hell or High Water? it was fine and ben foster was pretty good in it but it was also very cliched and morally confused

it's a genre film. I would say "morally layered."

Non-comic book movie makes money, not a bad movie. That's the story.

I want to check that one out. It's still in at least one theater here, so maybe on discount Tuesday.

I finally watched Sicario. The plot leaves a lot to be desired but the core vibe, as I texted a friend, is "this film is some dark shit" and I felt like it kept that up without ever quite drifting over into being farcical. Del Toro as unstoppable killer stepped up to that line but by that point he was more force majeure than human character.

About halfway in, after Blunt's character actually enters the bank, I was sure the scenes revolving around the family man cop in Nogales were setting him up as her eventual killer.

Have watched some of Miss Bala - can report that I really feel the difference now between that way of presenting the cartel problem and the way Sicario did it

really want to see Hell or High Water.

I saw this last night, I thought it was really good but strangely a little light on story. however i think it gets a lot of mileage out of its atmosphere and performances, and i thought the soundtrack was A+. i don't notice soundtracks too much in recent films, it's nice to get blindsided by a good one.

Hell or High Water is good, but it's got some of the same on-the-nose "this is bigger than your average thriller, it's about the REAL ISSUES man" stuff that Sicario had. Like, the screenwriter literally makes a cameo herding cattle and says, "Can you believe I'm doing this shit in 2016?!" It's like, yeah, we get it; every character in this movie has already given a speech about the state of the modern economy.

That said, it's nice to have a reasonably well-written movie that tries to pull off that stuff, even if it doesn't always succeed, which is I think why it's getting the praise it's getting. The acting is uniformly good, Foster especially, and David Mackenzie is a better director than Villeneuve, even if HoHW doesn't have a Deakins-level talent as DP.

and the final scene is like a far better version of the sicario finale, which i found more than a little silly and overheated

this felt like a very well done but ultimately bad movie...

good action setpieces & acting & terrible overall story & plot

which?

Krush Groove

which? presumably the film in the motherfucking thread title

I thought we were on to this week's feature on The Wonderful World of Disney but I guess it's still the Sicario thread

rewatching this right after rewatching NCFOM. Compare and contrast!

Benicio Del Toro, Jeffrey Donovan and Josh Brolin all together, and no funnies = this film is just a little tiny bit up its own ass

I watched it for the first time a few weeks ago & was really impressed. Not at all what I expected - none of the usual exposition-heavy handholding/narration etc. I enjoyed it, super-tense, beautifully shot

The convoy scenes going in & coming out were so good

Brolin kinsa nailed the whole "spook" steez & attitude, right down to the flip flops lol

*kinda

I think that steez is a little bit overcooked in movies because the only spooks that hollywood guys consult with are retired yaga-yagas who tend to exaggerate their careers to bank fees

btw I'm glad we still say "steez" aren't you?

but in terms of the hollywood idea of a "spook" he did a good job

it would be a pretty boring role for anyone to play if it wasn't kinda overcooked imo

somewhere in between the high-strung obsessives trying to catch Jason Bourne and the retired SOCOM guys in flip flops is a boring person competently doing office work with ~25% travel

i'm enjoying jeffrey donovan's post-'burn notice' career, seems to play a lot of kennedys

xpost exactly. suburban-looking normcore

Benicio still brought some funnies to this, didn't he?

i don't know what the deal was with the wet willie torture of bernthal but i appreciated its use

I hate this fucking movie lol

i really liked this. i loved the twist that i only realized toward the end that the main character of the movie is not the "hero" at all. she kinda sucks at her job! it's totally not about her. i thought that was pretty cool. they do a good job of making you think that she matters and she doesn't matter AT ALL. that felt novel to me.

I watched this on a flight back from ireland last month and thought it was great but then a friend told me theres something about watching stuff at atmosphere that makes you like it more?

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/10/why-we-cry-on-planes/280143/

explains why interstellar made me cry.. stupid ass movie playing me like a fiddle!

Doesn't fuckin work on toddlers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pymm6cmE9uQ

Brolin least interesting thing in first one but hell yes I'll see this

I don't know that it needed a sequel.

looks like it maintains the Villeneuve style. I agree w/Brolin assessment but I think he was certainly good, his charisma gets him a long way in that type of role. Stefano Sollima directed this, he also directed the film version of Suburra.

wondering if Sheridan has a trilogy in mind, i'd be down for that.

2icario

A coworker said something about not needing more Sicario after he mentioned liking Villeneuve’s last few films and I thought he meant rewatching it. I had no clue whatsoever a sequel was being made. I guess we might get more Benicio, who was uh actually the title character in the first, now that I think about it?

SICARIO sucked.

yea I thought it was booooooooooring

Sicario wasn't awful, but the only way I'd care about a sequel would be if it was directed by John Hyams (the dude behind the DTV Universal Soldier sequels).

i would be down for sequel if it’s at the same quality level.

i loved Sicario

It didn't hang together at all but there were two or three scenes that were among the best of the year imo

agreed. it just didn't amount to anything, i felt

whoa just like the war on drugs 🤔🤔🤔

ha i thought you meant the band for a second and thought 'wait theres nothing good about them'

i welcome the balearic bits of the war on drugs tbh

DEA agents pursuing tanned drug lords across a breezy beach etc

the images and sound together were amazing but as a film, it’s among the many where the dynamic of being human seems by-the-numbers and not evocative of actual human experience or feeling

maybe that’s what it feels like to be an agent in the drug war, but even the character who is our entry point seems somewhat forced.

on the other hand, divorced from the dynamic of relating to normal people could benefit the sequel, an experience not attempting to relate to the average person but showing the detachment from people who appear at the other end of a gun

I've been saying this before, but Mexican filmmakers has made so many good films about the drug war that I don't really need an American/Canadian film which doesn't get any details right and doesn't make sense.

Villeneuve should not make political films (Polytechnique and Incendies are pretty bad as well) but luckily he isn't doing that anymore. He does have his strengths, no doubt about it.

yeah he can bench 450lbs iirc

I liked Incendies for its mythical qualities; I daren't take it seriously as political commentary. I prefer the weirder, cheaper end of his stuff (Maelstrom, Enemy)

i still think that emily blunt was one of the best macguffins i've ever seen in a movie. the film, ultimately, had nothing to do with her. i thought that was so cool! this movie was trickier than you might think. i'd watch it again. don't have high hopes for a sequel but i'd watch it on hulu or netflix.

I feel like a bad person for wanting it, but

SICARIO 2: SOLDADO by stefano sollima, starring catherine keener, benicio del toro, and josh brolin

somehow appeals to me. somehow they made the sequel title even more blunt (no emily, though)

its a video game adaptation without bothering with the video game first

seems like the new director's a decent fit, pretty good cinematographer pick, and imdb's claiming the music is Hildur Guðnadóttir, who worked with Johannsen on a lot of his good soundtracks, so my fingers are crossed

all we can really know for sure is Benicio del Toro will shoot some guys

by gad its enough

I can't see sicario anymore without recreating the ridiculous "that's chappie" twitter joke

benicio shows up on the airplane at the beginning, I lean to the side and whisper "he's the sicario"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIMChzE_aCo

so they mashed up Logan and Sicario huh

Wrote some of this on the general films thread: I saw Sicario 2 a couple nights ago and I thought it was solid but definitely a little less heightened and odd and mysterious than the first one. Stefano Sollima is good, but the film is definitely closer to Clear and Present Danger in terms of craft and style and even story: lots of government intrigue and failed missions leading to abandoning your people behind enemy lines shit.

The drawback w/having no Emily Blunt is you gotta turn your amoral characters w/murky motives into more moral dudes who question their mission. This isn’t necessarily a drawback but it makes this one a bit cleaner and more black and white than the first.

Del Toro and Brolin are both extremely good, the latter actually in particular. The story is just weirdly paced and as I said in the other thread the gov’t intrigue w/Matthew Modine and Catherine Keener just feels boilerplate.

The action scenes are extremely effective and the central ambush is tense.

If you did not like Sicario I’d say avoid this one though.

started poorly with chud-bait ‘zomg radical islamist terrorists are crossing the border disguised as mexican immigrants!’ bullshit, went steadily downhill from there in a miasma of sour machismo until it briefly looked like they had the guts to kill off benicio in a startlingly unglamorous and perfunctory way, then continued its downhill movement when it transpired that they did not

the first movie was bad, this one is bad and deeply unpleasant

I don’t think the writer thought through the terrorism angle, i guess the dude in the beginning was supposed to be unrelated to the dudes in the store attack? The latter group was from Jersey iirc? It didn’t make sense.

Also i don’t think a mom would do what the mom in the store attack scene did...

xpost. Agreed. Just an unpleasant, unnecessary flick.

the thing that really bugs me about these movies is that they're every bit as comic-booky and ridiculous as a rambo flick but we're expected to view it as something more than an excuse for people getting shot in interesting ways because it's draped in this oppressive olive-drab seriousness where everyone is a morally grey special operative who understands how to hold their weapon for maximum tactical awesomeness

benicio's back story is that he's a mild-mannered lawyer who somehow becomes the world's greatest killing machine after his family is murdered - we're never (iirc) told how this happens

he might as well have been bitten by a radioactive sniper scope for all the attention the movie gives to his transformation ffs

in retrospect so much of my enjoyment of the first movie was the cinematography/musical score gelling during the long overhead shots and underlit action scenes. accepting the entire "emily blunt's character is really there to be their foot in the door" non-twist as the key point of the plot, she's injected into the world of the central body of the film and expelled at the end like an audience member, perfect stand-in

the best part of sicario 2 was the trailer tbh

like c'mon when benicio does that ridiculous move where he's shooting the handgun really fast, that's the shot

yeah, the technical side of these movies is really impressive, i just wish it wasn't in the service of jerking off over the spectacle of hard-bitten men making 'difficult' decisions about murdering people in desperately awful situations

I do get the impression that the core audience isn't people who look at brolin & co. and think "these are the bad guys, too" which is bad

the "he's protecting the kid" narrative device in the second was lazy but adding "also he knows sign language because his murdered child was deaf" was perhaps a bridge too far and I may have stifled an "ahhh, c'mon" during my viewing

in a world... where grizzled men fire adavanced weapons with unheard of speed and accuracy in the pursuit of a hobby... GUN RANGE coming next fall

that was a movie with mark wahlberg iirc

i do get the impression that the core audience isn't people who look at brolin & co. and think "these are the bad guys, too" which is bad

otm - in a way i kinda appreciate that the sequel doesn't make as much of an effort to dress up its core interest in super-cool tactical manshooting in social-commentary drag tho, it's just these two horrible fucks from the first movie doing horrible shit unemcumbered by the presence of emily blunt going 'oooo shit maybe i should do something about this ahh fuck it i'll go along with it just once more'

i have to say, the kid put in a really good performance in the sequel, i liked her a lot

should probably begrudgingly rewatch the sequel when it's on a free streaming platform

looking at the credits, only now remembering that catherine keener was in this. one of the larger issues w/the sequel might have been casting good actors in the government oversight subplot and then giving that part of the script nothing but boilerplate material

bg, i must inform you that the actress that played the kid will be taking on the lead role... in a dora the explorer movie

obvious next step after a sicario film imo

and apparently omar made the same point re: keener/modine on another movies thread!

DORA THE EXPLORER by denis villeneuve, starring isabela moner, benicio del toro and josh brolin

an idealistic seven-year-old latina girl is enlisted by a a talking purple backpack and a red-booted monkey to aid in a whimsical war against drugs at the border area between the u.s. and mexico

I liked how they set up the kid as a fighter and bully, making her more complicated than just an heiress. I'd put these two closer to the Greengrass Bourne movies than boilerplate, but this is a genre where great actors and quality camerawork, editing, sound make me forgive a lot.

xpost - hahaha

the character of the kid who wants to become a sicario is pretty bad. he is a little wary about getting into the gang, i *guess* decides to shoot Benicio in order to...save his own life? no, his cousin was ready to help give him a pass on that. so I guess he really wanted to prove himself? but then he bails from the gang a few minutes before they're killed by Brolin and his crew, he's free and...a year later, he's all tatted up and i guess in the gang? i'm all right with characters have weird motivations and change of heart moments, but when they're in a thinly drawn character played by an actor who's a total blank slate...idk.

can't wait for that kid to be robin to benicio's batman in sicario 3: reqiuem

Sicario 3: So You Want to Be a Sicario

how could anyone have an issue with the sequel its mighty shtuff

nb were there meant to be subtitles we didnt get the subtitles

yeah but no tho

Wrote some of this on the general films thread: I saw Sicario 2 a couple nights ago and I thought it was solid but definitely a little less heightened and odd and mysterious than the first one. Stefano Sollima is good, but the film is definitely closer to Clear and Present Danger in terms of craft and style and even story: lots of government intrigue and failed missions leading to abandoning your people behind enemy lines shit.

The drawback w/having no Emily Blunt is you gotta turn your amoral characters w/murky motives into more moral dudes who question their mission. This isn’t necessarily a drawback but it makes this one a bit cleaner and more black and white than the first.

Del Toro and Brolin are both extremely good, the latter actually in particular. The story is just weirdly paced and as I said in the other thread the gov’t intrigue w/Matthew Modine and Catherine Keener just feels boilerplate.

The action scenes are extremely effective and the central ambush is tense.

If you did not like Sicario I’d say avoid this one though.

― omar little, Sunday, 2 December 2018 20:35 (five months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes this is all otm its good

i dislike when ppl watch a movie and when characters in it do things and we arent told dont do these things the assumption is we are being told to do these things ofc the ppl who do this always make clear they understand themselves not to do these things this is a bad way to watch and think about a movie as murky and goodlooking and confusing and stylish as this, which could not much more obviously be an exercise in execution and look

it’s like rambo iii, but bad

Watched this last night for the first time since 2016, and it held up well. Brolin and Blunt, both so good. And I just love the disorienting lack of information that we and Blunt's character have throughout.

Thinking of this one and The Counselor, I wonder if border thrillers are inevitably conservative: the domesticated American west versus the lawlessness just over the border wall.

Didn't realize until after watching it that Taylor Sheridan (who went on to make Yellowstone) wrote this.

ha, that totally makes sense