Stop me if you heard this before: I found out about Sicario shortly before its release and was eager to see it in theaters but couldn’t find the time until–

What’s that?

Oh.  Ok, moving right along…

So I finally got to see Sicario via the magic of home video.  I was very eager to do so and heard plenty of good things about the film.  In fact, as of this writing it has an astonishing 93% positive among critics and an equally impressive 86% positive among audiences according to Rotten Tomatoes.

While watching the film, I was impressed with many things, from Emily Blunt’s Kate Macer (the film’s protagonist), Benecio Del Toro’s mysterious -and deadly- Alejandro, and Josh Brolin’s Matt Graver, a good ol’ boy spook.

I was engaged with the film but as it played out and, especially when it reached the end, I found myself curiously unimpressed with the totality of the venture despite so many reasons to recommend it.

To begin there are at least four action/suspense set pieces within Sicario that are nothing short of terrific.  One occurs at the beginning of the movie (and quite a bit of it can be seen in the trailer below), a second at a border crossing, a third involving a tunnel chase eventually leading to a high level drug lord, and the fourth at the movie’s end.

Really great stuff.  And yet…

As good as those elements were and as I said above, when all was said and done I felt the movie could have been so much better.

So I wondered what was it that made the film not quite work for me.

I think a part of the problem was the use of such familiar and well-established actors in so many roles.  In some ways their appearances (and I’m not even mentioning the likes of Jeffrey Donovan, Victor Garber, and Jon Bernthal) proved somewhat distracting and took me away from viewing this film as “real”.  The established actors in the lead roles, too, had me anticipating the film would never get too terribly “dark”.  Sometimes established actors are loathe to go too far out of a certain comfort zone.

Perhaps I’m not explaining myself very clearly so I’ll use the following example:

A number of years ago I saw the Swedish film Insomnia (originally released in 1997).  At the time I didn’t recognize any of the actors, though since the movie’s release Stellan Skarsgard has made inroads in American films and is now a more familiar face.

The film, which involved a corrupt police officer that either accidentally or very much on purpose killed his partner while lost in a fog and on the hunt for a serial killer.  Our protagonist’s partner’s death was not insignificant: The partner, it was revealed, was about to turn our protagonist in to the Police Internal Review Board because of the many shady and illegal things he had done.  After his partner’s killing, the film follows our could be/might be evil cop as he continues his hunt for the serial killer.  He does this while facing the inevitable Internal Review Board hammer that’s about to come down, the serial killer whose victims keep popping up, and the Northern town they’re in.  In that town and during this time of the year a day lasts weeks and the sun shines near constantly and our increasingly fragile lead cannot get any sleep.

As I watched Insomnia, I didn’t know where it was going or whether our protagonist was truly evil or regretted his action(s) or some wild combination of the two.  This great unknowing added to the movie’s tension and made us wonder just where we were going.

Five years later and in 2002 director Christopher Nolan remade Insomnia.  In the remake, he cast Al Pacino as the protagonist and Robin Williams as the serial killer.  Though all the elements of the originally movie were used and the American film version was an almost scene for scene remake, lost in the translation was all that delightful tension of not knowing what our protagonist was up to.

Because we had Al Pacino in the lead, I somehow knew he would eventually be shown as rising above and, if not excusing, at least making amends for his many sins.  I knew this almost instinctually from the very moment we first saw Al Pacino on the screen and therefore much of the original film’s tension was effectively gone.

With Sicario’s use of familiar, established actors, I kinda/sorta knew the film would not get too dark and, sure enough, it never did. Had the film used less well known/established actors, I suspect we would have a different dynamic and audiences would wonder what would happen when Alejandro and Kate finally confronted each other…instead of knowing there was simply no chance the director and actors involved would stray too far down a very dark hole.

I know it sounds like I’m blaming the actors for the film’s failing to totally turn me on and, further, it comes across as a disservice considering they played their roles quite well.  Emily Blunt was very good in the role of an innocent who faces ultimate evil.  Benecio Del Toro was equally great as a wolf in sheep’s clothing (loved the fact that he was in a white suit at the very start of the film, then in a later scene is shown removing it and revealing the black clothing below).

But facts are facts and, as I said, I simply could not see these well established actors veering wildly off the path and into a potentially pitch black conclusion.

So in the end, despite some very good scenes and overall good work by all involved, I can only give Sicaro a mild recommendation.  You most certainly will not walk away hating the film, but you might, like me, wish it could have been more.