★★☆☆☆

I hate to admit it, but I was really disappointed with Sicario. It had all of the right things behind it and it failed. I rented this movie because it had Emily Blunt and what ordinary guy doesn’t like a story about the FBI hunting down a drug lord? I don’t really know what it did wrong. It even had Oscar winner Benicio Del Toro. Sicario should have been a grand slam block buster movie instead of leaving me feeling “why do I care?”

Why did Sicario fail?

When I sit and think about it I think the real reason Sicario failed is that it billed itself as action yet focused on the drama. Yes, it had a few obligatory shoot outs but they really felt forced as if someone in the studio said “Ack! We paid for a shoot-em up” so the crew filmed a few and just dropped them into the final edit.

It kind of failed at the drama as well. Yes, there was this really evil guy doing evil things for the governments involved, but, most of those evil things are only hinted at. You don’t actually see him torture or brutally kill anyone. The biggest chunk of drama comes near the end when the really evil guy is threatening Emily Blunt’s character and forcing her to sign a statement saying everything they did was by the book when basically none of it was.

Perhaps I’m too old and jaded to enjoy such movies. Personally, when it comes to taking down drug cartels I believe the book was just something which was published and put on a shelf to say it exists. When you are trying to take down groups which abandoned all human decency killing for both profit and pleasure; rules are going to get an awful lot of good people killed. These are not people with dignity so why should they be shown any form of dignity?

What could have fixed this movie?

Instead of trying to straddle the middle ground this movie should have made a choice. Either be a non-stop shoot-em up or be a full drama showing the horrific crimes and interrogations. Instead it left me not really caring about any character in the film.

For more movie rental ideas please see list one and list two.