Sicario Best Quotes – ‘You saw things you shouldn’t have seen.’

Starring: Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, Benicio Del Toro, Jon Bernthal, Victor Garber, Jeffrey Donovan, Raoul Trujillo, Daniel Kaluuya, Maximiliano Hernández

OUR RATING: ★★★★☆

Story:

Crime drama directed by Denis Villeneuve. In Mexico, Sicario means hitman. In the lawless border area stretching between the US and Mexico, idealistic FBI agent Kate Macy (Emily Blunt) is enlisted by an elite government task force official, Matt (Josh Brolin), to aid in the escalating war against drugs. Led by an enigmatic consultant, Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro), with a questionable past, the team sets out on a clandestine journey forcing Kate to question everything that she believes in order to survive.

Best Quotes

Matt: State Department’s pulling an agent that specializes in responding to escalated cartel activity. You’ll be part of the team.
Kate Macer: This is not my department.

Matt: You want to be a part of this?
Kate Macer: Do we get an opportunity to get the men responsible for today?
Matt: The men who are really responsible for today.

Kate Macer: What’s our objective?
Matt: To dramatically over-react.

Kate Macer: You’re not American.
Alejandro: No.
Kate Macer: Who do you work for now?
Alejandro: Well, I go where I’m sent.

Alejandro: Every day I cross that border, people are kidnapped with or killed with his blessing. To find him would be like discovering a vaccine.

Alejandro: You’re asking me how the watch is made. For now just keep your eye on the time.

Kate Macer: I just want to know what I’m getting into.

Alejandro: You will not survive here.

Kate Macer: I’m not a solider, this is not what I do!

Matt: You saw things you shouldn’t have seen.

Kate Macer: He’s a hitman.
Matt: He works for anyone who will turn him lose.

Kate Macer: I’m going to tell everyone what you did.
Matt: That would be a major mistake.

Alejandro: Nothing will make sense to your American ears, but in the end you will understand.

Kate Macer: They used me as bate.

Kate Macer: I was about to have sex with my hitman.
Alejandro: He wasn’t going to kill you, he just wanted to know what you know.

Alejandro: You should move to a small town, somewhere the rule of law still exists. You will not survive here. You are not a wolf, and this is a land of wolves now.

Trailer:

Justin Mancini (Davis, CA, USA) says

June 13, 2018 at 8:40 pm

Denis Villeneuve’s latest film thrusts us into the heart of Mexican cartel country, and seeks to convey the mean streets of Juarez to desensitized modern audiences. It even puts a woman in the lead role, a feat still rare in today’s studio pictures…then makes her totally ineffective. In the film’s worldview, do-gooders are screwed, everyone is corrupt, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

And yet…I can’t dismiss the film as uninteresting or lazily assembled. An incredible amount of care has gone into this ultimately shallow exploration of drug warfare. So let’s take the good with the bad. Here are 4 reasons why this film impresses, and 4 reasons why it disappoints.

# 1. The Good
It represents a clear, uncompromising directorial vision

Say what you will about the film’s lack of profundity; you can’t dismiss it as incompetently made. In portraying the drug war for the clusterfuck it is, Villeneuve largely succeeds with painstaking set-pieces and relentless suspense. Be they intricate gunfights or sinister conversations, each scene has been choreographed within an inch of its life. Villeneuve made precisely the film he wanted to make. As misguided as I believe the film may be, I much prefer Villeneuve’s vision over a movie beset by studio interference.

#1. The Bad
It tells us nothing new about the war on drugs

Did you know the war on drugs is a futile exercise? That America may just have done some pretty terrible things in that war? Maybe this would have surprised audiences in the 90s, but in a post-9/11 world, it’s hardly an incredible truth.

Yet the film treats its subject matter as profoundly shocking, as when Benicio Del Toro’s Alejandro hauls an office-size water cooler to an interrogation room. By sensationalizing America’s less-than-savory activities, and not portraying them as matter-of-fact, the film is more exploitation than muckraking truth.

#2. The Good
Roger Deakins’s photography

The superb cinematography on display here will come as no surprise to those familiar with the Coen Brothers or the most recent 007 film. Deakins is so good and so versatile at this point that he excels at both authentic grittiness and surprising visual flourishes. Whether it’s the hazy, sandy streets of Juarez, or silhouetted soldiers sinking into the ground beneath a blue-orange sky, Deakins’s visual artistry can almost make you forget the film’s narrative and character problems.

#2. The Bad
It’s utterly lacking in subtlety

Nothing gets my gut like characters stating the themes of a movie, especially when the film has already bludgeoned them home for the past two hours. So when Josh Brolin’s shady government operative restrains an angry Emily Blunt and screams at her “This is what we do!”, I was surprised he didn’t wink at the camera for the coup de grace.

When the dialogue isn’t hitting us over the head, the film’s structure betrays its transparent intentions. We’re introduced very early on to the family of a cartel member, clearly intended to mine our sympathy before something bad happens to him. Spoiler alert: it does.

#3: The Good:
The performances

While I won’t say the script allows for career defining performances, it does allow us to appreciate solid veterans doing what they do best. Josh Brolin adds just the right amount of humor to his enigmatic scheming, while Benicio Del Toro conveys so much with so little. (His imperative to Emily Blunt: “Don’t ever point a weapon at me again,” is chilling in its firm.)

Even in a limited role as FBI agent Kate Macer, Blunt finds authenticity that comes from a total commitment to her craft. She exudes both anxiety and professionalism, sometimes in the same moment. Which is why it’s disappointing to see her locked into the “naïve outsider” stereotype.

#3. The Bad
It sticks Emily Blunt in the thankless role of ineffectual moral center

No matter her experience or training, Kate must settle for being an inexperienced, compassionate woman in a world dominated by jaded, violent men. When Kate attempts to change the procedure or attempt a less violent course of action, she is immediately shot down (literally in one case, when she takes a bullet to the vest.) When she does manage to do anything, she’s promptly punished; even a brief attempt at a one night stand almost leads to lethal consequences. What’s more, the film eventually disappears from Kate’s perspective altogether, preferring Alejandro’s cold, callous badassery to Kate’s emotional turmoil.

The film plays on the trope of the starry eyed idealist in a corrupt environment, and then intentionally denies her any meaningful change in that system. But in a film so oppressive, that denial is hardly surprising. As the only major female character, she appears innocent and misguided next to her male colleagues. There’s no room for gray in this kind of characterization.

#4. The Good
The throbbing tension

The best moments in the film aren’t messages or monologues, but the impeccable settings that overwhelm our senses. Traveling with the U.S. convoy through Juarez, Villeneuve subjects us to tactile as well as visual stimuli (every bump in the road is felt as much as seen). In another gorgeously rendered set-piece, we see primarily from Kate’s viewpoint, witnessing fragmentary firefights and bloody aftermaths. Over a two hour run time; Villeneuve doesn’t let us catch a breath.

#4. The Bad
The violence grows tiresome and predictable

It’s true that the film works better in the pauses between violence, such as the sight of mangled bodies hanging from buildings in war-torn Juarez. But in terms of the violence we actually witness, you can feel Villeneuve straining to shock us as the body count increases with every scene. We hear in explicit detail how Alejandro’s family was massacred by a cartel boss, so it comes as no shock when he guns down both the boss’s wife and children. If every standoff ends the same way, where is the tension? We get it, Denis; violence begets more violence. The extremity of the violence doesn’t shock; it numbs.

Comments

Justin Mancini (Davis, CA, USA) says
June 13, 2018 at 8:40 pm
Denis Villeneuve’s latest film thrusts us into the heart of Mexican cartel country, and seeks to convey the mean streets of Juarez to desensitized modern audiences. It even puts a woman in the lead role, a feat still rare in today’s studio pictures…then makes her totally ineffective. In the film’s worldview, do-gooders are screwed, everyone is corrupt, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
And yet…I can’t dismiss the film as uninteresting or lazily assembled. An incredible amount of care has gone into this ultimately shallow exploration of drug warfare. So let’s take the good with the bad. Here are 4 reasons why this film impresses, and 4 reasons why it disappoints.
# 1. The Good
It represents a clear, uncompromising directorial vision
Say what you will about the film’s lack of profundity; you can’t dismiss it as incompetently made. In portraying the drug war for the clusterfuck it is, Villeneuve largely succeeds with painstaking set-pieces and relentless suspense. Be they intricate gunfights or sinister conversations, each scene has been choreographed within an inch of its life. Villeneuve made precisely the film he wanted to make. As misguided as I believe the film may be, I much prefer Villeneuve’s vision over a movie beset by studio interference.
#1. The Bad
It tells us nothing new about the war on drugs
Did you know the war on drugs is a futile exercise? That America may just have done some pretty terrible things in that war? Maybe this would have surprised audiences in the 90s, but in a post-9/11 world, it’s hardly an incredible truth.
Yet the film treats its subject matter as profoundly shocking, as when Benicio Del Toro’s Alejandro hauls an office-size water cooler to an interrogation room. By sensationalizing America’s less-than-savory activities, and not portraying them as matter-of-fact, the film is more exploitation than muckraking truth.
#2. The Good
Roger Deakins’s photography
The superb cinematography on display here will come as no surprise to those familiar with the Coen Brothers or the most recent 007 film. Deakins is so good and so versatile at this point that he excels at both authentic grittiness and surprising visual flourishes. Whether it’s the hazy, sandy streets of Juarez, or silhouetted soldiers sinking into the ground beneath a blue-orange sky, Deakins’s visual artistry can almost make you forget the film’s narrative and character problems.
#2. The Bad
It’s utterly lacking in subtlety
Nothing gets my gut like characters stating the themes of a movie, especially when the film has already bludgeoned them home for the past two hours. So when Josh Brolin’s shady government operative restrains an angry Emily Blunt and screams at her “This is what we do!”, I was surprised he didn’t wink at the camera for the coup de grace.
When the dialogue isn’t hitting us over the head, the film’s structure betrays its transparent intentions. We’re introduced very early on to the family of a cartel member, clearly intended to mine our sympathy before something bad happens to him. Spoiler alert: it does.
#3: The Good:
The performances
While I won’t say the script allows for career defining performances, it does allow us to appreciate solid veterans doing what they do best. Josh Brolin adds just the right amount of humor to his enigmatic scheming, while Benicio Del Toro conveys so much with so little. (His imperative to Emily Blunt: “Don’t ever point a weapon at me again,” is chilling in its firm.)
Even in a limited role as FBI agent Kate Macer, Blunt finds authenticity that comes from a total commitment to her craft. She exudes both anxiety and professionalism, sometimes in the same moment. Which is why it’s disappointing to see her locked into the “naïve outsider” stereotype.
#3. The Bad
It sticks Emily Blunt in the thankless role of ineffectual moral center
No matter her experience or training, Kate must settle for being an inexperienced, compassionate woman in a world dominated by jaded, violent men. When Kate attempts to change the procedure or attempt a less violent course of action, she is immediately shot down (literally in one case, when she takes a bullet to the vest.) When she does manage to do anything, she’s promptly punished; even a brief attempt at a one night stand almost leads to lethal consequences. What’s more, the film eventually disappears from Kate’s perspective altogether, preferring Alejandro’s cold, callous badassery to Kate’s emotional turmoil.
The film plays on the trope of the starry eyed idealist in a corrupt environment, and then intentionally denies her any meaningful change in that system. But in a film so oppressive, that denial is hardly surprising. As the only major female character, she appears innocent and misguided next to her male colleagues. There’s no room for gray in this kind of characterization.
#4. The Good
The throbbing tension
The best moments in the film aren’t messages or monologues, but the impeccable settings that overwhelm our senses. Traveling with the U.S. convoy through Juarez, Villeneuve subjects us to tactile as well as visual stimuli (every bump in the road is felt as much as seen). In another gorgeously rendered set-piece, we see primarily from Kate’s viewpoint, witnessing fragmentary firefights and bloody aftermaths. Over a two hour run time; Villeneuve doesn’t let us catch a breath.
#4. The Bad
The violence grows tiresome and predictable
It’s true that the film works better in the pauses between violence, such as the sight of mangled bodies hanging from buildings in war-torn Juarez. But in terms of the violence we actually witness, you can feel Villeneuve straining to shock us as the body count increases with every scene. We hear in explicit detail how Alejandro’s family was massacred by a cartel boss, so it comes as no shock when he guns down both the boss’s wife and children. If every standoff ends the same way, where is the tension? We get it, Denis; violence begets more violence. The extremity of the violence doesn’t shock; it numbs.

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