“There have been a few movies dealing with this topic coming out of Hollywood but nowhere near as many as those dealing with other violence hotspots, even though this particular one is right near America,” director Denis Villeneuve said at Cannes, discussing what attracted him to his latest film, Sicario. “Unlike the Iraq and Afghan wars, which were indeed sparked by American intervention, but are nevertheless across the world, the violence fueled by the drug trade is in the North America backyard.”
Shot by Roger Deakins, the crime drama finds Josh Brolin playing a CIA agent named Matt who recruits Emily Blunt’s character, a Tucson-based female cop named Kate who escorts two rangers to apprehend a drug kingpin. The story specifically features a loophole in which mercenaries are legally allowed to cross the border of Mexico in order to bring in a drug lord. Ahead of a fall release, we now have the first trailer.
We said in our review, “Psychologically, by situating an idealistic heroine at the heart of a militarized manhunt and forcing her to confront its sordid ethical realities, Sicario clearly aims to be the Mexican drug war’s Zero Dark Thirty (also on a visual level Villeneuve borrows a lot from Kathryn Bigelow’s film, for example a lengthy night-time ambush rendered in night-vision).”
Starring Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, Victor Garber, and Jon Bernthal, check out the trailer and poster below. Meanwhile, Villeneuve is already off shooting his next film, the sci-fi drama Story of Your Life, before he jumps to Blade Runner 2. While already starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner, A Serious Man‘s Michael Stuhlbarg recently joined the cast as a CIA agent, THR reports.
In the lawless border area stretching between the U.S. and Mexico, an idealistic FBI agent (Emily Blunt) is enlisted by an elite government task force official (Josh Brolin) to aid in the escalating war against drugs. Led by an enigmatic consultant with a questionable past (Benicio Del Toro), the team sets out on a clandestine journey forcing Kate to question everything that she believes in order to survive.
Sicario opens on September 18th.