Blunt’s is smart casting for the simple fact that she’s a terrific actor – this is one of those roles where you marvel at how little she’s doing with tiny, two-word lines like, “The truth” and “I’ll volunteer” – but more than that, her female face among the pistol-packing good ol’ boys and stern suits (shades of Foster in Silence of the Lambs) emphasizes her status as an outsider.
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Instead, it was her regal turn as a 19th-century British queen in The Young Victoria that landed her the drug-cartel drama (opens Friday in New York and Los Angeles, expands nationwide October 2). I think that when people will see the film, it will make sense because of the relationship she had with other characters. “At the same time, there was an inner strength and drive I was looking for”.
Sicario follows on the visceral style of storytelling, which director Denis Villeneuve previously delved with both Prisoners and Enemy, but Villenueve’s way to create tension, suspense and some genuinely exhilarating set-pieces are impeccable to say the least. “I felt doomed because I said, “…it’s gonna be dark again and it requires a lot stressful mental energy”, but I just fell in love with it at the time.
JOSH BROLIN: (As Matt) We’re going to go see Guillermo.
“That’s just something people are saying”.
In white writing on a black screen, we’re taught that Sicario was the name given to Hebrew Zealots (the name means “dagger men”) who fought to expel the Romans in Judea.
“I think it’s because the list is very short, because we don’t see women in these kind of roles”. “They were not militant – they sounded like me”. When Kate descends into one, Jóhannsson comes up with a noise that’s like the Earth giving up a final groan. I wanted to evoke things by suggestion. If not for the subject matter, I’d have broken into a grin.
Plus, Hazel (now 19 months old) “was so ideal and pink”, Blunt smiles. “This is a story in which, even when you think the villain has been caught, you realize the problem hasn’t really been resolved. She was so cute”.
“Sicario” star Emily Blunt was shaken by the sexist remarks of the investors. Del Toro, meanwhile, starts filming the unnamed Star Wars Episode VIII with Looper director Rian Johnson early next year (but neither confirms nor denies that he plays a villain).
And what a shame that would have been, because the actress is incredible as Kate Macer, a federal agent thrown into the escalating drug war at the Mexican border, in Sicario, which recently premiered at the Toronto global Film Festival. Josh Brolin sits at the centre chewing gum in the best way – the cool-headed government agent injects some much needed levity comic relief into the film. “I was pretty naive about it”, Blunt acknowledges.
The target, says Brolin’s good ole boy of a spook, is to get the guy behind the guy in cartel land. Having had a few more decades to prove itself unwinnable (partly thanks to Americans’ ceaseless drive to be Anywhere But Here), the War on Drugs makes for an even starker prism through which to view the handshakes with the devil that are the running theme of USA foreign policy.
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Throughout her versatile career, Emily Blunt has proven herself one of the most compelling and capable actresses in Hollywood today. While Sicario didn’t shoot on the streets of Juárez (too dangerous), the production did capture much of the city and its surrounding landscape via ample aerial footage, and stand-in border towns fully convince of the cauldron of evil in which the task force team operates.
