Here are review links for this film submitted by our members:
- Marco Albanese @ Stanze di Cinema [Italian]
- Excerpt: Villeneuve ha dichiarato di aver smussato le asprezze e l’orrore presenti nel copione originale, rendendolo però in questo modo sin troppo fragile: il conflitto non esplode mai e tutto appare lineare e programmatico.
- Dragan Antulov @ Draxblog VI [Croatian]
- José Arce @ LaButaca.net [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Denis Villeneuve nos sumerge en la sucia guerra contra el narcotráfico con un thriller de acción que puede resultar anecdótico en su base, pero que luce una potencia y una fluidez visual y narrativa que elevan el conjunto hasta atenazar al espectador.
- Jason Bailey @ Flavorwire
- Excerpt: Sicario’ isn’t all sermonizing and metaphor; it’s a thoughtful film, but also a visceral and affecting one, capturing the intensity of these raids and encounters, thanks in no small part to Joe Walker’s crackerjack, hair-trigger editing and Jóhann Jóhannsson’s pounding, relentless score. It’s a picture that grabs your innards, and squeezes.
- Chris Barsanti @ PopMatters
- Excerpt: The collapsing world order is chillingly illuminated in Denis Villeneuve’s stark cartel thriller.
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- Matt Brown @ Twitch
- Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: Tense drama with a standout performance by Emily Blunt as a conscience-driven FBI agent on a dangerous hunt for a Mexican druglord.
- Francisco Cangiano @ CineXpress [Spanish]
- Robert Cashill @ Popdose
- Excerpt: Reviews of Sicario and Escobar: Paradise Lost, on Blu-ray.
- Edgar Chaput @ PopOptiq
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: after all the mysterious buildup, what eventually goes down isn’t all that surprising or earth shattering except in its hair trigger execution, the filmmaking superior to the story it services
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: Sheridan suggests that the object of this game is not to stop the drug trade but to perpetuate the game itself.
- James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
- Hugo Gomes @ http://cinematograficamentefalando.blogs.sapo.pt [Portuguese]
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Delivers enough sheer brutality and suspense to maintain two hours of dread-filled anxiety….
- Vadym Grygoriev @ kinoblog.com [Ukrainian]
- Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: This isn’t a detailed investigation into the drug trade. It’s a bleak mood piece that gives the viewer a you-are-there perspective.
- Blake Howard @ Graffiti With Punctuation
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: The “War on Drugs” has never felt more like an actual war in this brutal, scathing condemnation of the lawlessness of the battle… on the “good guys” side.
- Steve Katz @ The Alpha Primitive
- Excerpt: The shortcomings of VIlleneuve’s previous work has been boiled away under the oppressive sun of the Arizona/Mexico border.
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Sicario is not only a taut, grimy hornet’s nest of a thriller shrouded in urgency and threat but a cagey morality tale told with plenty of gray shadings and deeper implications in place of finite answers.
- Kristin Dreyer Kramer @ NightsAndWeekends.com
- Daniel Lackey @ The Nightmare Gallery
- Alan Mattli @ Facing the Bitter Truth [German]
- Excerpt: Evoking Kathryn Bigelow in the best of ways, ‘Sicario’ is an intense cinematic experience that is more satisfying and more sustained than Villeneuve’s previous effort, ‘Prisoners’.
- [New – 12/10/15] | Matthew McKernan @ FilmWhinge
- Excerpt: Where it should confront and shock but stand above the nastiness shown onscreen, Sicario instead remains mired in the same ambiguities as the film’s American characters. But when these ambiguities involve assassination and torture, that’s an uncomfortable place for a film of any sort to be.
- Jason McKiernan @ film Racket
- Excerpt: There is so much to admire in Sicario that it seems wrong to confess I could never fully engage with it. I kept trying to find a way in, but the film stifled me at every turn.
- Simon Miraudo @ Student Edge
- Jared Mobarak @ Jared Mobarak Reviews
- Excerpt: Kate’s innocence pushes her into horrible situations and her narrow escapes whittle away at her soul ever so slightly to open her eyes to Graver’s “world”. Her psychological prison is all we need to understand the stakes as she finds herself on an island apart.
- Pat Mullen @ Cinemablographer
- Excerpt: Denis Villeneuve is a marksman.
- João Pinto @ http://www.portal-cinema.com [Portuguese]
- Kristy Puchko @ Spinoff Online, Pajiba
- Excerpt: Sicario mingles the menacing and the mundane into a Western with a bleak criticism of America’s war on drugs.
- Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Tom Santilli @ Examiner.com
- Excerpt: Sicario barrels head-first into the unbridled chaos of the world and never flinches.
- Courtney Small @ Cinema Axis
- Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: [VIDEO ESSAY] A disappointment from start to finish, Denis Villeneuve’s attempting-to-be-edifying international drug thriller fails miserably by the social realist parameters it portends to fulfill with macho quasi-military bombast and blood-splattered spectacle.
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: A brilliant, unsettling piece of filmmaking.
- Rob Wallis @ Of All the Film Blogs
- Excerpt: a smoothly directed, sun-bleached action thriller.
- Andrew Wyatt @ St. Louis Magazine
- Excerpt: A pessimistic and morally pitch-black thriller, Sicario will likely leave some viewers sour and shell-shocked, but that should not diminish the film’s aesthetic achievements or its significance as a harrowing critique of the War on Drugs.
- George Zervopoulos @ Movies Ltd. [Greek]
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