Powerful and intense. Director Denis Villeneuve is doing some really interesting work. He made Prisoners in 2013 which had a great premise and some stunning moments. Enemy in 2013 with Jake Gyllenhaal was super creative and disturbing at the same time. And now Sicario shows that Villeneuve knows how to not only tell a tense and gripping story but he also knows how to shoot action.
Sicario feels more like a military film such as Zero Dark Thirty than a police/drug procedural. Many of the raid scenes are shot in a way that puts you right in the action. Roger Deakins cinematography is truly stunning (as expected) with gorgeous use of natural light and a keen eye for the wastelands of the Mexican border.
Overall, the script is great, constantly keeping you guessing and breaking cliches along the way. There’s some issues with Emily Blunt’s character motivations but she’s so good that it’s easy to look past that. Josh Brolin owns every scene he’s in. But the real standout here is Benecio Del Toro who is a force of nature on screen, chewing through scenery with cool-as-a-cucumber performance and an underlying threat boiling just below the surface. Amazing.