Emily Blunt
Benicio Del Toro
reviewed by Tom-Tom
The name Denis Villeneuve may not mean as much to filmgoers as his various oeuvres Incendies, Prisoners, or Enemy. I have seen the latter three and can attest to the strengths of the director’s style which includes a weighted intensity and patient yet significant panning of the camera. The intensity isn’t moody as in a Lynch film, although it bears the same dreadful feeling of imminent threat closing in on the protagonist(s). He doesn’t set store with memorable dialogue but rather ordinary, albeit never repetitive or trite speech that provides almost a documentary-like feel as the movie moves towards its inexorable conclusion. After the late Autumn frigid forests of Prisoners, and the dingy brick buildings of Enemy, we now get the Southwestern United States in Arizona and New Mexico. Utilizing mostly darkness as a tool in the aforementioned films, here he uses blinding sunlight over the flat desert wasteland, a bit of a change in style, visually, for the filmmaker. The effect is more shocking as very early on in Sicario, we are blindsided by threat lying in broad daylight.