“What are we looking for?” “Keep watching.” It’s a conversation between two characters in Sicario, but also between people in the audience and Denis Villeneuve, who many think has now proven himself to be one of the strongest directors in the field right now. This Emily Blunt-led US-Mexico manhunt picture, coming on the heels of his twin Gyllenhaal projects Prisoners and Enemy, is something of a stylistic blend of those two works. At its root, it is a straightforward white hat/black hat film. But the tone is what makes it new — icy and strange, creating a tension that most tracker movies never achieve. To compare to Sicario to Heat or Zero Dark Thirty or even, for one or two brief flashes, Apocalypse Now, is not out of line. With Roger Deakins’ photography and Jóhann Jóhannson’s original score mixed in, the movie is just that satisfying.
