Sicario's land of wolves desperately needs a Shepherd

Years ago, when my husband was just starting out in broadcasting, his first on-air job was in El Paso, Texas. Whenever friends or family visited, we’d take them over the Paso del Norte bridge into Ciudad Juarez for dinner and a show. The city on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande was three times the size of its Texan counterpart, so the restaurants were both swankier and livelier. On a busy evening, it would take us about 20 minutes to make it through the border checkpoint, though coming back could sometimes take as much as an hour. Plenty of other Americans were returning home after a night of food, dancing, and fun.

A couple of years after we left, I was on a plane with a Juarez business man who had recently moved his family permanently into El Paso. “No one goes over the border anymore,” he told me. “Most of those restaurants have closed. There’s no money to be made. Even the UTEP (University of Texas-El Paso) kids don’t want to risk being kidnapped or killed for a beer.”

I thought about this conversation while screening the new crime drama, Sicario, which hits theaters nationwide on Friday. Could this gruesome, R-rated spectacle of bloodshed really be the Juarez I remembered? According to news reports, not to mention reports from old friends in El Paso, it is. And though it probably wasn’t director Denis Villeneuve’s intention, it makes as persuasive an argument as any that it is law, consistently applied, that keeps a society’s natural tendency toward immorality in check. Disregard law—no matter how good your intentions—and soon your only recourse will be to appeal to the crafty and violent to rid yourself of the crafty and violent.

The story plays out through the eyes of Phoenix-based FBI agent, Kate Macer (Emily Blunt). For all the horrors she has seen in her career (and from a sickeningly realistic opening scene, we are clear that she has seen plenty), she’s still fairly naive. She still believes the drips and drops of bad guys she pulls out of the drug trade will eventually drain the sea.

When shady Department of Justice “operative” Matt (Josh Brolin) and his even shadier Colombian “associate” Alejandro (Benito Del Toro) recruit her to join a task force with an unspecified objective, the scales slowly begin to fall from Kate’s eyes. She’s thrust into the heart of cartel land and learns first-hand that it is a world run by the one who can deploy the deadliest sicario, a Mexican slang term for hitman. (It was also, an introductory note informs us, the name for the Jewish zealots who attacked Roman invaders in A.D. 70, which bring its own disturbing implications to the narrative).

The ugliness of Kate’s task force carrying out its mission is juxtaposed against backdrops of breathtaking natural beauty. One of the most dazzling is when a S.W.A.T. team, outfitted in full riot gear, sink like shadows into the fiery horizon of an Arizona sunset. The acting is equally impressive—Blunt, Brolin, and Del Toro will all likely make the long list of early Oscar contenders for their performances. But the film’s success goes mostly to Villeneuve, who brings us with shaky, jarring action into Kate’s perspective. This isn’t a message movie like, say 2000’s Traffic. But we can’t help drawing certain conclusions from Kate’s experience. We can’t help but realize how simpleminded are most of our arguments about the drug war and immigration.

There aren’t really good guys or bad guys in Sicario, but there is a specter of good and bad policy (though the film doesn’t say which is which). We see enough to know that while lax law may be a net positive for those illegal immigrants who make it into our country, we are also unleashing a torrent of bloodshed and chaos, not only on ourselves, but also on the Mexicans citizens who remain behind.

The even larger implication of Sicario, however, is the same as Ecclesiastes. We will never stop drug violence until people will stop trying to fill the emptiness in their souls with drugs … and drink and materialism and sex and job promotions and … and … and …

As one character puts it, we are in a land of wolves. Only a Shepherd can save us.