Ahead of its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, Denis Villeneuve’s crime drama Sicario has unveiled two more images, highlighting lead actress Emily Blunt along with Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro, without giving away much of anything in the story department.
According to HitFix, which debuted the images, the thriller is built around Kate Macer (Blunt), an idealistic FBI agent who becomes embroiled in a CIA operation to dispatch a Mexican drug cartel boss. While taking part in the highly dangerous mission, for which she is forced to leave Texas for the lawless Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez, Macer crosses paths with CIA official Matt Graves (Josh Brolin) and assassin Alejandro (Benicio del Toro). Jon Bernthal, Victor Garber and Jeffrey Donovan also star.
Sicario will be Villeneuve’s first film at Cannes – the director previously earned acclaim for his breakout Incendies, kidnapping thriller Prisoners and baffling character drama Enemy. Speaking with The Guardian, the helmer recently described his latest as “a very dark film, a dark poem, quite violent” and added that Sicario is far from your typical action movie:
“It’s about the alienation of the cycles of violence, how at one point we are in those spirals of violence and ask ourselves, ‘Is there a solution?’ My movie raises the question; it doesn’t give any answer.”
The movie is about a lot more than just drug cartels, though. Villeneuve articulated his thoughts on what he sees Sicario, which boasts a script from Sons of Anarchy actor Taylor Sheridan:
“The movie is about America … how America fantasises that it can solve problems beyond its borders, and about the collateral damage that results … and the legality and moral issues around that … It’s a movie that deals with idealism and realism and the tension between both … It takes place on the Mexican border, but it could have just as easily have been set in Afghanistan or the Middle East or various countries in Africa. In North America, we allow ourselves to do things that other countries can’t afford to.”
Expectations are sky-high for Sicario. After Cannes, the film will open wide on September 18, and we’ll all be able to find out whether Villeneuve’s latest is the awards contender many are already positing it as.
