Hacker Cinema
Sicario
2015 · Film · 122 min
Part of Sicario Collection
Directed by Denis Villeneuve
An idealistic FBI agent is enlisted by a government task force to aid in the escalating war against drugs at the border area between the U.S. and Mexico.
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40 comments on Hacker News
I think the visual differences broadly break into technical aspects (film grain, contrast) and aesthetic (composition, lighting, density, motion). A lot of modern viewers don't like film grain so any director not named Christopher Nolan, will get studio push back.
Personally, I'd prefer more grain texture in cinematic images but it's the era we live in, so I don't hate on BR 2049 for being an artifact of its era. It's nowhere near as bad as the visual sterile wipe that Wicked is. I do agree the compositional energy is a stylistic choice by Denis for this film. While Dune strikes a similar note visually, Sicario does get pretty kinetic at moments - so it's not his only note.
My main point was 2049 couldn't be the innovative, style-setting, visual sledghammer to that BR was - simply because there can only be one first and 2049 still had to be related to BR. Also, it's worth noting that the back story has much of Earth's population moving off-world in the 30 years since the original - as constant ads in BR were urging. So the urban overcrowding was reduced by 2049. In fact, it's one reason replicants are openly doing work-a-day jobs on Earth. Most of the humans have left.
Ultimately, I have so much reverence for the original as a visual tectonic impact still influencing films decades later, I went into 2049 with low expectations - which Villenueve managed to exceed. 2049 is nowhere near as great as the original, but I don't think there was any way it could have been - and very few films ever are. So it was enough that it didn't insult the original or stain its legacy. And to me, by simply being good, 2049 manages to be a success on its own terms.
- and thanks for the call back to Escape From New York, a film I saw on opening night at the Pantages in Hollywood.
I think this is a distinction between comedy and non-comedy genres.
There are many examples of protags in American comedies who never get their way -- Party Down, Seinfeld, Always Sunny. Part of this is the need for American sitcoms to maintain the status quo over dozens of episodes / several seasons.
You rarely see Hollywood action heroes who are beset with unrelenting disappointment -- they usually go through hell, but by the end of the third act, achieve some sort of triumph.
A notable counterexample is Sicario, but I wouldn't call it a "Hollywood action movie."
TFW next generation of US specop influencers are from SouthCom. Boring counter-narctoics = boring books = boring movies without explosions. At the end of the day policy bros just want to make sicario reality. That's barely a joke. Villeneuve triumph of the willed war on drugs.
> noticed Sheridan's name as an actor or director or writer or producer on seemingly damn near every major US TV and movie production in the past five to ten years.
He's credited on 9 movies total with a tenth to be released, and none of them particularly high profile. As far as TV, he is pretty prolific recently but the only way you could possibly think he's involved in "damn near every" TV production in recent years is if you exclusively watch westerns.
(Credit where credit's due: I just learned he wrote Sicario, which was an excellent movie imo.)
Edit - Citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Sheridan#Filmography
I dunno, 2015, I'm a little weak on this year: It Follows, Creed, Ex Machina, Max Max: Fury Road, Sicario, The Hateful 8. I'd watch those again with someone any time, and recommend all of them often. Several on my to-watch list most of which I expect to be good, like Queen of the Desert, While We're Young, Slow West, and The Overnight, just haven't made it to them yet. Not an exhaustive list, just gleaned from some titles I have at hand.
2016: Green Room, The Nice Guys, Hail Caesar!, The Neon Demon, Swiss Army Man, Hunt for the Wilder People, The VVitch, Train to Busan, Shin Godzilla, Moana (hey, I like this one), Arrival. Moonlight's on my to-watch and is supposed to be really good.
2017 (I've done OK on catching up with these!): The Lost City of Z, Dunkirk, Low Life, Good Time, Logan Lucky (absolutely slept on, kills it as a feel-good lightweight small-stakes heist movie), Blade Runner 2049, The Death of Stalin (I liked this less than a lot of folks, but given how widely-loved it was, I'm probably the idiot here), One Cut of the Dead, You Were Never Really Here. The Planet of the Apes movie from that year, plus Phantom Thread, and The Little Hours are to-watch for me and come highly recommended.
2018: Annihilation, Isle of Dogs, Upgrade, Sorry to Bother You, High Life, Eighth Grade, the Suspiria remake. To-watch that I expect to be good include Champion (Korean arm wrestling movie—there's another movie by the same name that year), First Reformed, BlacKkKLansman, The Favourite, The Wolf House, Climax, and some others.
2019: HUGE year for the particular (small) set I'm seeing on my list, including a ton to-watch but a bunch I've seen. Uncut Gems, The Lighthouse, Knives Out, Little Women, JoJo Rabbit, Ready or Not, Parasite, Midsommar, The Art of Self Defense, maybe Marriage Story (but if you've seen one Baumbach movie, you've kinda seen them all, and I'm not sure I'd put it above The Squid and the Whale). Midway's a well-above-average war movie and pairs great with Tora, Tora, Tora! as a crazy-long double feature in a really fun way. To-watch list is nuts and I really need to dedicate a month or so to filling out my watched-list for this year: First Cow, The Irishman, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Bacurau, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Farewell, The Souvenir, Blow the Man Down, The Vast of Night, Her Smell, Funan.
It basically just keeps going like that, year after year, and I've barely even tried to dredge up good movies for most of those years, the bulk of it's just stuff that's risen to my attention one way or another, and I'm terrible at keeping up with foreign film especially. I also left off some that a lot of folks would probably include, like at least one Mission Impossible (aside from MI2, I think these are all pretty good action movies, though quality varies a bit) and Avengers: Endgame which, opinion on the rest of Marvel aside (I think it's mostly kinda lazy crap? But was basically entertained for most of them regardless, so I guess I can't complain too much) was a hell of an event. Also Black Panther, which everyone loved but I was pretty meh on (I hate the entire end fight, and it's looooong)
Not sure I'm following on Denis, his most loved movies are all remakes of singular masterpieces (Dune, Sicario, Blade Runner)
It's interesting how they work to gain trust: just finance movies like Sicario so people accept they have no other option but to break the law. And of course they only want to serve the interest of the nation, not their selfish interests or private interests. Next movies will probably justify how they have to run the country. Just like the greatest ally in the Middle East does, where most presidents come from intelligence. War is peace.
I agree that Enemy, Sicario, and Prisoner are very good movies, not among my favorites but certainly much better than his newer stuff.
About Gosling I’ll refrain from commenting as it can get ugly. :)
Also Prisoners and Enemy were impactful imo (and Sicario of course). I feel like where Villeneuve fails in that respect, filmmakers such as Nicholas Winding Refn succeed— I just watched Drive for the first time (I know I know), and it was one of the best cinematic experiences I’ve had in probably 5 years. Even though the film had a bit of a distant, hands-off quality, one connected with the film and characters completely (a lot of that maybe had to do with Gosling’s impeccable performance, but I’m sure the director had something to do with it).
How do you feel about more modern movies like Sicario? That one has both a very strong message, fantastic dialogue and beautiful camera work, IMO.
Depends on where. International waters? No problem. Close to shore? Need LE backup to be legal. Navy VBSS teams can and do run interdictions on the regular in open seas.
The movie Sicario is basically premised off this idea of getting a LE Officer onboard for legality’s sake.
My top top pick is actually a youtube channel that does movie essays: https://www.youtube.com/@filmjoy
They are terrifically well researched with a bunch of easter eggs and production backstory and are put together in a high production value, thoughtful way.
They really made me love and appreciate film much more.
I think it's the same way as musicians appreciating music, right?
Non-musicians might say learning more about music theory, makes some music seem less magical in a 'knowing how it was done' sort of way.
But like a musician actively listening, watching film from a more critical viewpoint/lens is really fantastic. You start to think about things like 'who was the cinematographer?', 'Who did the music and score?' and enjoying finding things like how a certain director has a certain motif.
As for the film list:
- The lord of the rings trilogy, is I assume mandatory watching for all at this point.
- The Matrix trilogy, supplemented by the movie essay here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0VnYcMHuDc
- Whiplash (2014) A J.K simmons masterpiece
- Sicario (2015) Cinematographer Roger Deakins doing some amazing work alongside Denis Villeneuve.
- Blade Runner 2049 sort of an obvious choice but beautifully made, better than the original in all ways except maybe soundtrack. The original Vangelis Blade Runner music is sort of genre defining.
- Black Hawk Down (2001) Absolutely stellar cast some of whom in their first role or wouldn't have their breakout role until several movies later. Possibly one of the most well paced movies, it's extremely clear and coherent throughout. It's also tidy self and self contained, no one said lets make 10 sequels and a cinematic universe. Dealt with the morals and psychology of war that would be further touched on in Jarhead (2005) another great movie.
- The Hurt Locker (2008) If Jarhead is a claustrophobic look at how useless and powerless an average infantry soldier can feel during war, The Hurt Locker is a study of a soldier addicted to it. Through a lens of up close nihilism.
- The silence of the lambs (1991) Hannibal Lecter / Anthony Hopkins with a bunch of scenes that are so good they are studied in film schools. Genre best horror-thriller.
I have certainly pirated things, but I never made a real habit or practice of it. Mostly it was because I found there was no way to get what I wanted legally or conveniently, usually because of bullshit "windowing" practices.
As an example: at my house, my wife and I mostly only watch things together. We don't spend a lot of time in front of the TV, and so the time we DO spend that way is intentional, and pulls from a list of stuff we BOTH like.
Our tastes are not in perfect accord, though, so there are a few things she watches when I'm working late, and there are some movies I save for when she's out of town or otherwise occupied. One of those was the critically acclaimed Sicario.
Well, when I sat down to watch it when she was camping with a pal, I discovered that it was no longer available to rent online. Or buy. It had been "windowed" out for some reason.
Fuck. That.
20 minutes later, I had it. I wanted to pay for it, but there was no option to do so.
Come to think of it, the same thing happened 20 years ago or so with Battlestar Galactica. For some reason, the rightsholder wasn't releasing the prior season on DVD or digitally until substantially AFTER the new season started airing. This meant that for latecomers like us, it was more or less impossible to "catch up" before the last season started, which is crazy. Again, we WOULD have paid, but they weren't taking money, so we got the content anyway so we could watch the current season in sync with everyone else.
I do wish we still had the "long tail" that Netflix initially offered, but digital delivery leaves rightsholders with, well, too many rights. Right of first sale meant Netflix could rent a given DVD or BluRay in perpetuity, and the copyright owner couldn't do anything about it. With digital delivery, that's no longer true, and it creates crazy situations like the above.
Until recently, Denis Villeneuve's movies were in this range as well:
* Prisoners: US$ 46M
* Sicario: US$ 30M
* Arrival: US$ 47M
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Villeneuve#Reception
His first three movies were <$7M. He went up market (>$160M) with BR2049 and Dune.
The world isn’t a Marvel movie with good guys and bad guys. It’s more like Sicario: mostly bad guys with some innocent people caught in the crossfire.
Sicario sets a pretty high standard though, it’s a very good movie.
You're not alone. Denis has a great technical eye but Sicario so far is his closest to a great film.
Speaking of technical merits slipping a Mickey to a parched audience, see: The Mandalorian.
> Lawrence of Arabia from 1962 looks so much more real than Dune, even when just comparing the shots of people in Bedouin costumes hanging out in a desert
I don't quite feel that's a like-for-like comparison. All of the Denis Villeneuve's films I have watched have a surreal/unreal quality to them: from the top of my head Sicario, Arrival, and especially the one with the weird deer, whose name escapes me. That's just his "style" - I suppose it's how scenes are framed, color grading, and how his shots tend to linger; there's a dream-like quality to it, even for the "grittier" scenes - Sicario has a lot of those.
To me Sicario was a masterpiece. But Dune ... I could never get warm with it. Neither the book, nor the first movie nor the recent one.
> I was telling my partner that I felt the movie was meant for people who read the book. She thought it was boring.
A lot of people who read the book because of the upcoming movie also thought the book was boring.
I think that most people expect character-driven narrative, and so when you get a work that leans more towards ideas and concepts, people tune out.
Edit: I think is also why the movie Sicario (also by Villeneuve) threw some people off, because it didn't operate with a "normal" narrative: SPOILER {the roles of main character and protagonist were two different people}:
* https://thebarkbitesback.wordpress.com/2016/01/05/going-deep-inside-the-underbelly-of-sicario/
You only chose older films to contrast with Dune (2021). Blade Runner being the newest at nearly 40 years old. It’s a lot easier to bring up old media. Be it music or movies. People revere the old, the classics.
Apocalypse Now, which is amazing, in my opinion, didn’t get amazing reviews upon release.
Fall from grace means you didn’t like Arrival too much either? I loved Arrival as I loved Sicario and Enemy.
> Alien or Blade Runner?
I love the concept of time so personally I enjoyed Arrival more than either of these. Same with Ex Machina, Annihilation, Primer, and Upstream Color. I also think these films are better too. I admit I must have a bias against glorifying the classics because of it being done so much. Obviously everyone has biases.
> There is good cinema within our generation but it is startlingly rare. Most of what makes it to the theaters is bloodless, drained of anything to say about anything at all.
Yes. This is the easy way out. Revering the old is easy. In 40 years people will be saying how new films don’t compare to Dune (2021) or Blade Runner 2049.
You said what makes it to theaters. Not wide release films. That would include a lot of indie and other films. In that case, I completely disagree. I believe it has gotten better. I get to see movies with a wider range with the easier access and technology for smaller films that get to be made. Same with music.
When you state it's one of the best movies ever made, do you mean it's up there with Apocalypse Now? Are there lines or performances from Dune you intend to stand next to Brando's? Is it in any way pointing at or making explicit an essential aspect of the human condition in a way that no other film has done before? (You don't have to agree with me this is important for one of the best movies ever made but it helps.) Should it stand shoulder to shoulder with Bergman or--for sci-fi--Alien or Blade Runner? If so, I'd really appreciate an explanation of why you think it's one of the best movies ever made.
It's my opinion that Dune is the seal to Villeneuve's fall from grace. His early career was studded with greats like Sicario, which explored the deep vulnerability of a powerless female lead outflanked by the violent potential of the professional men in her company; and Enemy, a psychotic allegory for fear of real intimacy. Villeneuve was a rising star, I couldn't have been more excited for where he was pushing film together with his often companion, Roger Deakins.
Dune is nothing more than beautiful scenery with airbrushed beauties vaulting through bedecked spaces. The dialogue could have left the lips of anyone in any scene with as much impact as the platitudes of a college freshman.
There is good cinema within our generation but it is startlingly rare. Most of what makes it to the theaters is bloodless, drained of anything to say about anything at all. Villeneuve's new Blade Runner 2049 was a visual feast as equally as bankrupt. The passage from Nabokov's Pale Fire that Gosling was allowed to develop into the film's baseline test appears as a kind of last, bare rebellion from the director against the powers of Hollywood like Sylvan Esso's pop track Radio, 2 seconds longer than the mandated 3.30 of a real radio hit.
Worth thinking abut what DARPA is trying to kickstart with the $2 million "DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge"
Hint, wars/battles/skirmishes aren't fought in caves or tunnels. They weren't in Vietnam, they weren't in Afghanistan and not on the Mexican border, Sicario was just an (entertaining) movie.
Sicario? Did we watch the same film? I mean sure, that's the content they are dealing with-- gratuitous violence and murder is entrenched in that world and they told a story in that world. As far as film-making and story-telling goes, Sicario will probably always be a top 50 if not top 20 film for me. Also encourage anyone to check out Villeneuve's older less known movies (most of course know Arrival and Blade Runner 2049), such as Prisoners, Enemy and Incendies-- all fantastic movies.
Sorta related, this is a good film: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicario_(2015_film)
Also, one of the subplots in the excellent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babel_(film) is in Mexico.
Babel is by Mexican directors and writers. See the previous two in the triptych too.
> In Tarkovskian terms, they have no soul.
Isn't that basically true of every modern mainstream director? I can't think of anyone I would call Tarkovskian.
> whilst technically impressive, lack something fundamental and come across as sterile.
I try not to be curmudgeonly about big-budget filmmaking - I don't think there's anything inherently bad about it, but surely there's some truth to the idea that Villeneuve "sold out" starting with Sicario, right? I'd say Prisoners, Enemy, Incendies, and Polytechnique are all extremely good films, but they're precisely the ones that most people haven't seen. I don't think there's any way you could call those films "sterile", though Enemy certainly has a dry intellectual air to it.
I think what you might be latching onto is the aesthetic of Villeneuve's films. They tend to be gritty and realistic, which can read as soulless but I don't think it's quite the same thing. Calling a movie soulless speaks to its (lack of) spiritual / emotive vision, and while none of his films have the slow pacing of a Tarkovsky or their sense for atmosphere, I would say his early movies (and probably BR2049) don't lack a vision. They have something they want to say, and that message isn't a nihilistic or misanthropic one.
Have you seen any of his movies prior to Arrival and Sicario?
Incendies, Enemy, and Prisoners are all quite emotional in distinct ways. Although, I personally feel Arrival was definitely emotional in its own way.
Before The Rain about love and war in Macedonia. Amazing and impactful film.
Time of the Gypsies by Emir Kusturica - just go in cold to this, one of my favorite movies. Featuring musical score from the incomparable Gorman Bregovic.
Enemy by Villeneuve (or literally anything from this director; also check out the compelling Incendies, and Sicario of course; Prisoners is also amazing)
Literally pick any movie from Iranian director Asghar Farhadi. The Salesman is probably my favorite from him. Very impactful and each of his movies shows a compelling and unique slice of life.
Haha what a clever end run around the rule. Just get a single Coast Guard officer in and you can enforce using the military. Reminds me of the fact that California has no civil asset forfeiture but the police have revshares with the feds and the feds can totally still do their civil asset forfeiture, so Californian police just route their stuff through the feds who take a cut. Very much in the hacker spirit.
Also reminds me of that movie Sicario.
Totally. In terms of handling it, there was a French horror film "Inside" which is very good but involves attacking a pregnant woman. After having kids I found I just couldn't stomach it, which was a change. Same for Sicario's child murder scene which I found just terribly lazy and desperate to be "edgy" and all these rave reviews just pissed me off. Having kids definitely over sensitized me.. in a good way.
Luckily, nothing too exciting happened. We were operating in the financial tech space in Mexico, trying to make lending less comically predatory (a standard small business loan in Mexico can have close to the same interest rate as a payday loan in the US).
With that goal in mind, we were targeting areas in Mexico that needed the most help. Cities with a decent small business sector, looking to grow, and having difficulty doing so. Juarez was a perfect fit, especially given that a lot of citizens have been across the border and can see how much better things can be. My parents were not amused. Then the movie Sicario came out soon after, and they were somehow less amused. But I got to ride around in armored vehicles with a security detail, so that was fun.
Really my "learned not to fuck with the cartels" lesson came from our market research. This may surprise you, but the banks in Mexico are... sketchy. Well, not all of them, but definitely a few. In particular, we were in a competing market as Banco Azteca. It appears to have since been removed, but at the time, the Banco Azteca wikipedia page described it as having "a uniquely effective debt collection system" or something like that.
Yeah, what they actually have is a motorcycle gang. They give you a loan with massive, often times impossible to pay off interest rates, and if you don't pay them back, motorcycle dudes with bats show up to collect, or take enough of your property to make up the difference.
I am happy and sad. Arrival and Sicario are precisely the kind of complex, thoughtful directing that SF needs after years of Marvel movies.
On the other hand, why reboot Dune yet again? Nobody has given Asimov's Foundation a try!
Very surprised to pop in and see discussion of Dune without mention that Denis Villeneuve is rebooting Dune. [0] Villeneuve is also working on the Blade Runner sequel scheduled for release in October.
For anyone who has seen Arrival, Sicario, or his other movies, I wonder if you're on the same hype level as me. He's absolutely excellent. He also seems to loves sci-fi, which can't hurt.
[0] http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/1/14468876/dune-reboot-denis-villeneuve-director-official
https://cineargus.com/
Follow directors, script writers and DOPs on movies and get alerted when new movies they work on come out.
I wrote it mainly for myself. When I sit down to watch a movie I decide on what I want to watch based more and more on who made it rather than what it's about. E.g. Taylor Sheridan wrote "Sicario". Based on how much I enjoyed that movie, I knew I would likely want to watch "Hell or High Water".
Still a bit incomplete, I haven't written the "how it works" section yet. But you can search for movies and find people that worked on them, follow them and get alerts.
So much credit goes to Villeneuve, who elevates scripts that could easily go wrong into works of art. See Sicario if you haven't, for example—a script that would have been a pedestrian drug war film in lesser hands.
I just watch Sicario last night - pretty good movie actually - a central element to the story is how they operate in US borders.
I watched Sicario last night. Great movie, but it also highlighted how the drug war will never be won and what a waste of life, money and time it is.
If you like stories like this, check out the movie Sicario for a very eerie telling of cartels and the police.
Let them do that then. It's not as if it would be easy. Prohibition showed how effective legalization can be (and I don't mean just marijuana). Legalize everything across the board. That means pharma-grade cocaine, heroin being sold without prescription (and taxed) to any adult that wishes to buy them.
Alas, let's not pretend that the 'good guys' (at least the americans) want to solve the drug problem. It results in lucrative profits that can be kept off the books and fed into various "programs", and has also led to the establishment of a massive bureaucracy that will be hard if not impossible to dislodge.
Someone else mentioned the movie Sicario in this thread. It's pretty bad in terms of plot, but one line comes to mind: One of the characters that plays a CIA agent says: "If only 20% of the population could be pesuaded to stop smoking and snorting that shit..." in order to conveniently shift the blame towards the populace. As if that worked with alcohol, or cigarettes or anything that can short-circuit the pleasure/reward neural pathways.
But I'm digressing here. A bad movie does not a point make. The real CIA knows full well I imagine that legalization is the only real solution to the problem (even if it comes with its own costs) but of course the real CIA also needs endless suitcases full of dollars to fund its operations.
That's a plot point of the recent movie Sicario. (Highly recommended - it's the movie of the year for me.)