Caught Sicario, the new US/Mexico drug war movie starring Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, and Benicio Del Toro. This movie is getting fantastic reviews and a lot of that praise is deserved. The basic plot is that Emily Blunt is an FBI agent working the kidnap recovery strike force and she’s recruited by Brolin’s team of DEA agents to help take down a drug lord responsible for a very grisly kidnap rescue.

The most direct review of this film is that it has a palpable sense of dread and uncertainty that can really unnerve you. The use of this bass-line repetitive toned music will get under your skin while the camera is used in such a way that it always feels like something horrible is just around a corner. Even when all they are showing is desert vistas. This is expert film making and cinematography.

As good as the movie looks (and it looks amazing) and as suspenseful and thrilling as the action scenes are (and they are suspenseful and thrilling), the story structure is a big problem. The movie marketing is suggesting this is an Emily Blunt film where she plays this kick-ass FBI or DEA agent… but really she’s the audience surrogate in an fish-out-of-water story. She’s brought into this DEA (and possibly CIA) strike force and no one tells her much of anything… they seem to be deliberately leaving her in the dark, thus she has almost no agency and she almost does nothing that moves the plot forward. Her character is there simply to be driven around and explain things to (when the movie decides its worth explaining its plot). She’s also there to offer a glimmer of uncorrupted optimism. But since this movie’s world and characters are so corrupt, there’s not much she can do so the character then becomes more symbolic of corrupted ideals. Not really a character.

The ultimate theme of the movie is hardly original. If you want to take down the bad guys, beware of becoming the bad guy (if you stare long enough into the abyss, the abyss stares back). It’s not original but the movie’s sordid and dark soul at least makes us believe the theme. It also helps its not overtly preachy – you get the point without them awkwardly narrating to you.

Also, the movie takes place along the border with incursions into Juarez, Mexico. The Juraez Board of Tourism does not approve of this movie… the city comes across as hell on earth and either a promotion of Donald-Trump-like plans to lock down the border or the idea that drug policy in the US has turned the border into this war zone and maybe the solution is to end that war. Take your pick, either side has an argument in this movie.

So, yeah, this is a good but very dark and very suspenseful and thrilling movie. But if you were going in to see Emily Blunt reprise her ass kicking roll of Rita Vrtansky from Edge of Tomorrow, you won’t get it. When you can take the character out of the movie and still have the same basic movie, there’s some script or marketing problems.

Score: 87