# Sicario (2015) | Ep. 58 - Part 1

An episode of [All The Right Movies](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1471502633), 9 May 2025, 1 h 10 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO6598581778.mp3

The border has its own rules, and Kate Macer is about to learn them. Luke, Westy, and Matt begin the story of Denis Villeneuve's tense, morally murky thriller about the war on drugs. In Part 1 we cover the film's opening, director Denis Villeneuve, the cast, and the second act — including Emily Blunt's way into a man's world, Benicio del Toro's enigmatic operative, and the dread Villeneuve cranks tighter with every scene. Part 2, covering the crew, the finale, reception, and the film's legacy, is available now. Connect with ATRM: To support what we do, access our archive and listen to exclusive episodes, become an ATRM patron: Listen on Patreon Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify Twitter/X: @ATRightMovies YouTube: Subscribe to our channel Instagram: @allthe_rightmovies Threads: @allthe_rightmovies Facebook: Join our movie group Bluesky: @alltherightmovies.com TikTok: @alltherightmovies Website: alltherightmovies.com

## Transcript

[0:04] All their old movies. What's their objective?
[0:08] To dramatically overreact, Kate, you must volunteer for an
[0:15] interagency task force. Think very hard before you
[0:19] respond. You want to be a part of this.
[0:24] Do we get an opportunity of the men responsible for today?
[0:28] The men who are really responsible for today, yeah.
[0:33] I'll volunteer. Straight shooting FBI agent Kate
[0:39] Meser is dragged into a morally ambiguous cross country border
[0:42] battle, forming part of the US war on drugs.
[0:45] Her two mentors in the field opt for a little information,
[0:48] leaving Kate adrift in a foreign land.
[0:51] Sicario cemented Denis Villeneuve's place in Hollywood
[0:54] as the new Thinking Persons wunderkind director helped by
[0:57] three outstanding lead performances this cartel crime
[1:00] flick, 1 box office and critical plaudits.
[1:03] My name is Luke and the two wolves with me are Westie.
[1:06] You're asking me how a watch works.
[1:08] For now, let's keep an eye on the time.
[1:10] And Matt? No lawyers on this train.
[1:13] Just give me the girl. All the right movies are
[1:16] dramatically overreacting and making enough noise to be called
[1:19] back over to Mexico. Hi everyone, welcome to All the
[1:40] Right Movies, a tree shake and chaos creating podcast on
[1:43] classic and hit films. Very nice.
[1:46] This week we're in the Land of Wolves as we go behind the
[1:49] scenes on Dennyville nerves. Modern great Sicario.
[1:52] Lovely. A sun drenched nightmare of a
[1:54] film. But before we do that, it's that
[1:59] time of the show where we tell you being a patron of all the
[2:02] right movies. Absolutely the only cartel to be
[2:04] part of. Yeah, we won't put you in a VAT
[2:08] of acid if you piss us off. Well, maybe.
[2:11] Let's see what happens, Matt. Let's make no promises.
[2:13] Of course not, we can't. If you are a new listener, you
[2:17] know the warmest welcomes. Yes, come on in the Water is
[2:20] just fine. This is our classic podcast, and
[2:22] only the most recent 25 episodes are available for all to listen.
[2:26] The rest are available in our podcast archive now.
[2:29] This is episode 114, so there are 89 podcasts just like this
[2:34] that you can listen to by becoming a patron of all the
[2:37] right movies. You can do that on Apple's
[2:38] podcast, Spotify, and Patreon. OK.
[2:41] Also, if you spot us on Patreon, you can get access to two
[2:44] additional exclusive movie podcasts that me and the two
[2:47] fellas here create every month and they are double feature
[2:50] where we put two films against each other with a thematic
[2:53] thread. Yes.
[2:55] And then the watch list where we review new movie releases
[2:58] generally. Yeah, all fantastic.
[3:00] All fantastic, all brand new, all essential I would say.
[3:04] Absolutely. Yeah.
[3:05] And there are countless of the benefits of becoming a Patreon
[3:08] supporter of all the right movies.
[3:09] So sign up at patreon.com/all the Right Movies.
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[3:17] If you can support us, that would be amazing.
[3:19] And whichever option you choose, you're in for a hell of a good
[3:21] time, no doubt. Yeah, OK, so it's back to the
[3:26] Chihuahua deserts and Sicario film that is basically Westy in
[3:30] visual form. Of course it was your pick,
[3:35] Westie. Yeah.
[3:36] Why do you want to talk about Sicario?
[3:38] I mean, we're talking about this on Double Feature, yes.
[3:40] And I feel like we need to kind of stick with the guns a little
[3:43] bit and actually follow through on the promise of putting it
[3:46] into a classic episode. Because it warned in that what
[3:48] happens is if it wins, it goes into contention for being a
[3:51] classic episode. Exactly.
[3:52] I should have explained that, but thanks.
[3:54] That's why you're here. That's why, Yeah.
[3:56] You know, the creases of my crap logic, and it's absolutely one
[4:00] of them films that I keep coming back to.
[4:01] I think it's just absolutely fantastic.
[4:03] I love the way it just weaves the storyline.
[4:06] I love the way it's shot. Obviously it's something we feel
[4:09] we've seen a million times, but again, it's brand new.
[4:11] Yeah, you know, it's a film that explores things that we've seen
[4:14] and over and over again. But he makes it very personal.
[4:17] It's a very intelligent film. It's one of them films that I
[4:20] really like because it's it's a very slow burn, but you don't
[4:22] get it on the first watch. You've got to go back and you've
[4:25] got to go back and you've got to go back like 3, maybe 4 times
[4:28] until it clicks. I think Emily Blunt's fantastic
[4:30] in it, which we talked about in Double Feature.
[4:32] Del Toro is incredible in this film.
[4:34] Roland's incredible in this film.
[4:36] I love every single thing about it, really, and it's just one of
[4:39] the films that I really want to talk about, get in depth with it
[4:42] and really explore it. So that's why I've put it up.
[4:44] Brilliant. Get in the grooves of it.
[4:46] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I saw Where the Flicks
[4:48] when it first came out, purely because it was feeling nerf.
[4:51] I'd seen Prisoners and Enemy and I was excited about his next
[4:54] thing and this kind of review. So I was in there and I did
[4:57] leave the cinema feeling a bit let down, like you were saying
[4:59] where see demands rewatches. No, it is very intricate.
[5:03] Yes it is. Is that a call back to a joke
[5:08] from our double? Feature show, but you might have
[5:10] to say that they listen back to that one.
[5:11] But that's an in joke. It's a little call back.
[5:15] I think I was expecting something with a bit more
[5:17] action, maybe. Yeah.
[5:19] And like you said, we all came back to it a couple of years
[5:21] ago. In my opinion of it skyrocketed
[5:23] on the rewatch. I think I just needed a bit more
[5:25] time with it because on paper, it's just straight up my alley.
[5:29] Yeah. And like you said, Westie,
[5:30] cinematography is unbelievable. The music makes you feel ill at
[5:34] ease for at least two hours after watching the film.
[5:37] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's some real standout
[5:40] moments. The three leads at first rate,
[5:42] particularly del Toro, who embodies, like, silent terror
[5:45] incredibly well. Yeah.
[5:47] I think it's the definition of a modern great.
[5:50] So it deserves our attention, I think.
[5:53] What about you, Matt? Very similar to what you've both
[5:56] said, yes. It is about time we kept a word
[5:58] about double feature winners actually getting the classic
[6:01] treatment. Yes and yeah.
[6:03] For me, Sicario is a film I've done quite a big 180 on over the
[6:06] years because I also saw that the cinema and I just wasn't
[6:08] that taken with it for whatever reason.
[6:10] I thought it was fine, but nothing remarkable.
[6:13] But then other people kept bringing it up in conversation.
[6:16] I kept seeing it on people's lists of the best films of the
[6:19] 20th century and whatever. And I thought, yeah, there
[6:22] probably is something there worth going back to because, you
[6:24] know, I didn't dislike it and you don't hear things in it, but
[6:26] just that was. Probably me, wasn't it?
[6:28] You were definitely on that list, yes.
[6:32] Keep talking about this one. So I did over time I've gone
[6:36] back to it a few times to the point where I started to get a
[6:39] lot more out of it and to the point where, you know, it was my
[6:42] choice to put it up as a double feature.
[6:43] And when Emily blood episode a couple years ago.
[6:45] So just as happy to give her the full deep dive.
[6:48] Lovely Zakari was written by Taylor Sheridan, directed by
[6:51] Denis Villeneuve and Co produced by Basil Iwanak, Edwin McDonald,
[6:55] Molly Smith, FAD and Trent Look and Bill for Black Label Media
[6:58] and Thunder Rd. Productions.
[7:01] Largely shot in Albuquerque, El Paso and Mexico City, it was
[7:04] distributed by Lionsgate in the theaters on the 18th of
[7:07] September 2015. Emily Blunt stars as Kate Mesa,
[7:11] Josh Brolin as Mcgraver, Benicio del Toro as Alejandro Gillick
[7:15] and Daniel Cluya as Reggie Win. OK, so we're on the Mexico US
[7:19] border where nothing will make sense to your ears and you'll
[7:22] doubt everything that we do, but by the end you will understand.
[7:29] The beginning. We open with the literal and
[7:34] metaphorical bang in Chandler, AZ were introduced to Kate and
[7:38] Reggie's world as the infiltrator drug ring and found
[7:41] a very nasty surprise hidden in the walls.
[7:44] Over to you to start us off, Westie.
[7:47] OK, well, I didn't mention Roger Dickens in the intro, and that's
[7:50] probably because I'm going to mention them all the way through
[7:52] everything. Else and I.
[7:54] Was like, no, I'm just going to kind of push it down.
[7:56] I'm just going to repress that thought.
[7:58] But this opening shot is like, you know, when you're on holiday
[8:01] and you just sit in in the the apartment for a little while and
[8:04] then you go outside and it's like.
[8:06] Oh. How everything's just so like
[8:08] viciously bright, you can kind of make make things out, but
[8:11] it's not overexposed. And then you get them black
[8:14] figures walking into the shot. It's just beautifully
[8:17] contrasted. And I was just straight in.
[8:19] I was like, right, OK, this makes perfect sense.
[8:21] It's not an overused color palette.
[8:22] It's beautifully shot. Here we'll go and then we'll cut
[8:24] it inside that vehicle, the SWAT vehicle.
[8:26] I've heard deacons on the podcast say that they couldn't
[8:29] really afford to get the SWAT vehicle and drive it through and
[8:31] have these shafts of light coming through that.
[8:33] I just saw Enigmatic and just so quite the angels on our
[8:36] shoulders kind of thing, which is in the script.
[8:39] So that was actually needed to do that.
[8:40] So what they did is they build this, it's made out of cardboard
[8:43] and they put these strips in the cardboard and there's people
[8:46] rocking the set backwards and forwards, and then they're just
[8:49] moving the light through and it's just catching it with the
[8:51] haze. Just like they didn't Blue
[8:52] valve. Yeah, it's just unbelievable.
[8:55] But you can tell it's everybody firing on all cylinders here
[8:57] with a budget that they're not necessarily used to.
[9:00] I don't think they used to something this low, especially
[9:02] not deacons at this point. And I do think that this is the
[9:05] only of going to him and saying I've seen no countries for old
[9:07] men. Can we just have a little bit of
[9:09] that or you know 85% of that maybe do?
[9:12] That. Just do that.
[9:13] And it just goes from visually beautiful to just intense.
[9:18] It's just so loud and just so vibrant and that just going
[9:21] through the wall and you're thinking what's going on here?
[9:24] Absolutely crazy. And it's just this score that's
[9:27] just underneath like this, like the devil's heartbeat.
[9:29] It's just pounding, but just so distant.
[9:32] But it's just, it's awful and it's just, it's just reminding
[9:35] you that there's just something not right before they even come
[9:39] through. We get that great shot of dust.
[9:40] And that's a recurring theme, which I think kind of reflects
[9:43] them. And they're ghosts and they're
[9:45] just turn up and vanish. And we've got that as a
[9:48] recurring visual theme viability, which works really,
[9:50] really well. But there's just this really
[9:52] great moment where it comes to the FBI.
[9:55] He shoots first. You know, everyone's in the
[9:56] right. There's only two guys there.
[9:58] What's he shooting at? There's nobody here.
[10:00] And then there's that moment where it's just then it's a
[10:01] horror film, what is going on and open the wall.
[10:05] And then it's just how they're disgusted by the smell.
[10:08] And then when that happens and then we get that score again and
[10:10] there's just the camera matches that note.
[10:12] It just creeps forward. Just people are being sick
[10:16] outside. It creeps behind Emily, bloody
[10:17] creeps forward. It creeps towards the bodies.
[10:20] And you're like, I don't want to see that.
[10:21] It's like you're being pulled towards unconveyable.
[10:23] You just don't want to come anywhere near it.
[10:25] But it's like you're slowly getting pulled into this hell,
[10:27] and then we'll get everybody on the scene.
[10:29] Everybody's looking through it. Yeah, the guys in the hazmat
[10:31] suits are looking through. You get the forensic team in
[10:33] there, which I definitely would have had Cate Blanchett in there
[10:35] to do another cameo. Looks like that first.
[10:38] Just just for the hell of it. It would have been great.
[10:41] But that's just me. Everything, everything wanted.
[10:43] Hello. It would have been wonderful
[10:44] just to break up the tension here.
[10:45] That would have been just for the explosion.
[10:47] But then you see they need the ball cutters, something else is
[10:49] going on, there's nothing over with.
[10:51] And then that explosion hits you like a tonne of bricks.
[10:54] Like the sound design on that volume just went, how loud can
[10:57] we make it? Well, that's about as loud as
[10:59] what we make before people go deaf, right?
[11:01] Just do that. Then we don't make anyone deaf,
[11:03] but just about there until they do, right?
[11:05] Great. It's just so powerfully done, so
[11:08] well played. If you don't want to watch the
[11:10] rest of this after the opening, you've got a serious problem.
[11:13] Without the dead bodies and without the explosion, it would
[11:15] still be a bloody good sequence. Oh, absolutely.
[11:18] Yeah, those two things under it, I love it when they we need the
[11:21] ball cutters and then it cuts to a close up of one of those
[11:24] bodies in the walls and you know, that's something really
[11:27] bad is. Going to.
[11:27] Happen, yeah. A lot of the background
[11:29] characters in this scene were taken up by actual SWAT, Navy
[11:32] SEAL, and DEA agent, so I think it gives it a certain amount of
[11:36] subconscious authenticity. Oh, it really does.
[11:38] Yeah. And then because this mission
[11:39] has gone so badly, Kate gets pulled in for what she thinks is
[11:43] going to be a debrief. And it's definitely got that
[11:45] waiting outside the teacher's office vibe, hasn't it?
[11:48] Because is this a good thing she's there?
[11:50] Is it a bad thing? Did Kate do anything wrong on
[11:52] that mission? And it doesn't seem like, but
[11:55] who knows for these people, how they take these operations look
[11:57] all like this, too. And it's interesting when they
[11:59] start talking about her suitability for the mission, how
[12:02] quickly Matt, which is Brolin's character, jumps to a positive
[12:06] opinion of her suitability. But he completely dismisses
[12:09] Reggie my often accord about no lawyers on this train because
[12:12] even though Reggie would get totally sooner 2 of Iraq, the
[12:15] fact that he has a law degree and that's a negative format
[12:17] that's extremely telling what Matt knows they're going to be
[12:20] doing once the cross the border. He Matt's body language changes
[12:23] when he hears that and he's shot from the back and he just goes,
[12:26] oh, that's, that's why. He can't see his face.
[12:28] Brilliant. Yeah.
[12:29] And then when kid goes into the office and starts talking,
[12:31] there's, there's such a definite Silence of the Lambs field of
[12:34] this as well. When she steps in that room and
[12:36] it's her POV and they're all looking at it.
[12:38] It's like that sort of Cleese going into the elevator, which
[12:41] is run by all the male FBI agents.
[12:43] And then those POV shots looking directly at her and it just
[12:46] continues to be disoriented and without no.
[12:48] And to see like all the information that gets thrown at
[12:51] all she can say is, well, I'm not Privy to that.
[12:53] And I'm not Privy to that either.
[12:54] I don't know, Yeah. I don't know.
[12:56] Yeah, Still has no idea why she's there.
[12:58] And then when Matt thoughts that question at it if she's married
[13:00] or has kids. And I think it's such an
[13:02] interesting question because she bristles at it immediately.
[13:05] But isn't that being casually sexist here?
[13:07] Also trying to work out what kind of leverage the cartels
[13:10] would have over if they got hold of her or even more sinister, if
[13:14] she does disappear, who would be asking questions about the
[13:17] implications? Yeah, What are the implications?
[13:19] Which is never answered throughout the film.
[13:21] So I. Think it's all of them things.
[13:22] To be honest, yeah, quite possibly.
[13:24] Fair. Yeah.
[13:25] I mean, would you ask if he did one Reggie Long?
[13:27] Would he have asked Reggie if he had a wife and kids?
[13:29] Maybe, maybe not. So it's left ambiguous, which I
[13:32] like a lot. And then it's just kids set up
[13:34] for the rest of the journey. She's on the journey.
[13:36] She doesn't know what the journey is kind of idealistic
[13:39] blue eyed approach to. I want to get the people who
[13:42] created this mess that I was in this morning.
[13:44] Yeah. No questions asked or no
[13:46] questions answered, which I think that's quite important.
[13:49] Yeah, yeah. I mean, just putting trust in
[13:50] the people higher above her. And I think that's a mistake.
[13:53] And that's what we all. Do you would do naturally.
[13:55] Wouldn't you put, you put trust in your government, don't you?
[13:57] That's what the whole, that's what the film is trying to say
[13:59] is you don't quite know what's going on and you take an oath to
[14:01] it. You go, okay, yeah, I'll trust
[14:02] you. But behind the scenes, it's a
[14:04] lot darker than you think. Very much.
[14:06] And then when she gets on the plane, I love that Matt, not
[14:09] this Matt. Matt Graver, played by Royal.
[14:12] But you do love me. Yeah, yeah, I love you as well,
[14:14] Matt. Yeah.
[14:15] Don't, don't get that wrong. I love that Gravey introduces
[14:20] Alejandro from afar to Katie said.
[14:22] That's my bird dog over there, Alejandro.
[14:24] But you don't know that it's del Toro until he comes on the
[14:27] plane. Yeah, there's nothing given by
[14:29] way of explanation from Graver, who just curls up and goes to
[14:32] sleep like a dog. And he leaves Kate in the
[14:36] presence of this stranger who tells her that they're going to
[14:39] Juarez, which basically means you're going into the war zone.
[14:43] Terrifying. Yeah, and very confusing from
[14:45] our point of view. Kate knows.
[14:47] As little as we do. And in this scene, Alejandro
[14:50] wakes up in a panic, but we never specifically find out why.
[14:54] But in the original screenplay, there was a nightmare sequence
[14:56] where Alejandro was tied to a chair by his wrist while his
[14:59] daughter was being put in a VAT of acid and his wife's head was
[15:02] cut off. DMA Yeah, yeah.
[15:04] I mean, if you listen closely, you can hear the screams of his
[15:07] wife and daughter underneath the sound of the engines of the
[15:09] plane, which I didn't really notice until maybe 4th of.
[15:12] It's very, very subtle, but it's there.
[15:14] Brilliant. It is so pleased they didn't
[15:16] have that though. I love the ambiguity of it all,
[15:17] the mystery of it. It's.
[15:18] Better left unsaid or unseen that yeah.
[15:21] Definitely, yeah. That sounds like a soul film or
[15:24] something that's too much too gross.
[15:26] Yeah, but I mean, the way then you would have done it, I don't
[15:28] know. I have absolutely no idea what
[15:30] that would have looked like. I think that the way that Taylor
[15:32] Sheridan wrote it though, would have been a little bit too on
[15:35] the nose. It would have been very, very
[15:37] much, yet very graphic. Yeah, When Alejandro wakes up, I
[15:40] love that he composes himself, Kate says, are you all right?
[15:43] And he takes a moment. He goes, yeah.
[15:46] Fine. Yeah, just completely
[15:48] unflappable. Yeah.
[15:51] When Kate asks if there's anything she should know, you're
[15:54] quote at the top. Westie, I on this is you're
[15:56] asking me how a watch works? For now, just let's keep an eye
[15:58] on the time. Yeah, it's a great line.
[16:01] It could have been a little bit cheesy had it not been for the
[16:05] tone that Phil Nerve brings to the whole film, because there's
[16:07] a couple of lines like that. I think, well, that's really
[16:09] good, but it could have been judged very badly.
[16:12] It could have been. It could have backfired.
[16:13] And when he says that to Kate, she's completely incredulous.
[16:16] She just looks at him in silence for a while and it's almost
[16:19] laughable how much little information she's she's being
[16:21] given. She's like, really?
[16:24] OK. Yeah, and this is what we're
[16:27] going to expect for that, Alejandro, For the rest of the
[16:29] film, you don't say much, but what he does say absolute
[16:33] zingers, every one of them. Fantastic.
[16:35] Story. So it's just immediate unease
[16:38] from the opening sequence. Something doesn't quite feel
[16:40] right and like it. We're completely in the dark,
[16:47] Matt and Alejandro touched down, and answers continue to be out
[16:50] of reach. Matt, you're picking up here.
[16:52] I am this mission brief in Texas.
[16:55] Blunt is so excellent in the scene it tipping us off to all
[16:59] the red flags that are going up for KT.
[17:01] Yet Alejandro in this scene pretty much just ignoring
[17:04] everything being said about the mission.
[17:06] Just checking his phone. Yeah, it's like main a work
[17:08] meeting like what like do. You want that on record.
[17:14] Maybe not. I do not.
[17:17] Like none of this is concerning to him and why?
[17:19] Why is no one paying attention to him at the same time or Oscar
[17:22] name his opinions? It's like, it's like no one else
[17:25] can see him in the room. Possible, isn't he?
[17:27] He is because. Like when everyone gets up at
[17:29] the end of it, he just stays in the seat and she tries to
[17:32] question him and gets the bare minimum out of him before he
[17:35] essentially tells us. That.
[17:36] Kind of your quote from earlier, Luke.
[17:37] You won't understand anything anyway.
[17:39] And then he just walks out. Yeah.
[17:41] But before that, there's just this moment where Vein left just
[17:44] holds the camera on her face. And Emily Blunt, she doesn't
[17:48] blink, she just slightly inclines ahead, taking it all
[17:51] in, but without any dialogue. You know all the.
[17:53] Thoughts were went through her mind at that moment, Yes, making
[17:57] jokes of the fact that once the bullets start flying, they'll
[18:00] behind behind the Deltas. What has she got herself into
[18:03] here? And she has never looked more
[18:06] out of place than when that Delta guy who was sat next to
[18:08] her just moves past her and like, she's got obviously got
[18:11] this slender frame and he is like a man mountain next to it.
[18:15] So there's a lot of questions, not many answers.
[18:18] And either the ones she does get the not particularly satisfying.
[18:21] But yeah, this for me, it's one of Blunt's finest moments.
[18:24] Just from, from what she doesn't say being, you know what she's
[18:26] thinking anyway. Yeah, mix mismatch of the team
[18:29] as well. It's that picking mix of people,
[18:31] isn't it? Yeah, and those guys, I mean, if
[18:33] they need to do a like a Predator remake, then just cast
[18:36] those guys because they're all just massive.
[18:40] But nonetheless, she hasn't got answers.
[18:41] She continues down to Juarez. And this car journey is is just
[18:46] it's a stand out for the film for me.
[18:48] It's absolutely stunning. A2 de force a filmmaking, huge
[18:52] wide vistas in those overhead shots, almost like we're looking
[18:55] down on Mexico judging it. That big long tracking shot over
[18:59] the border is magnificent. It just highlights just how huge
[19:02] the operation is to keep everything at Bay on that border
[19:06] crossing. Then when we get down to Mexico,
[19:08] that image of the hanging, dead naked bodies is just chilling.
[19:13] Yeah, it really is. Yeah.
[19:14] There's a banner above them. One of the things it says is
[19:17] we're watching you. I don't doubt it.
[19:19] For a second. Yeah, it's not down the guy.
[19:22] He's just so in awe of it. It's great what they do.
[19:24] Yeah. Wow, terrifying make they make
[19:28] you think they've done something wrong, but that probably haven't
[19:30] and they're just random people, but it makes you scared like
[19:34] just it's. Terrifying.
[19:35] It's really it's like a scene from a horror movie.
[19:37] It is. The intensity of this sequence
[19:39] is almost unparalleled, certainly from what is basically
[19:42] just a car ride with very little dialogue and no apparent threat.
[19:46] Yeah, yeah. Apart from the dead naked
[19:49] bodies, of course. Yeah, apart from that, yeah,
[19:50] when they are moving, it's fine. It's when they stop and you're
[19:53] like, what the stop for? Alejandro here when he's in the
[19:55] car with Kate. Another zinger.
[19:57] Keep an eye out for the state police.
[19:58] They're not always the good guys.
[20:00] So who the fuck is then? Are.
[20:03] We the good guys and then when they pick up Guillermo and then
[20:06] they leave Juarez, there's some incredible long distance wide
[20:09] shots of the motorcade and these provide such a huge sense of
[20:13] full boarding. That banner earlier is right.
[20:16] They are watching us. It's as if these cars are being
[20:18] tracked by the binoculars. It's incredible.
[20:21] Filming in Juarez would have been obviously far too risky for
[20:24] the cast and crew considering drug cartels that are active in
[20:27] the city. Making a film about the war on
[20:29] drugs in this hotbed cartel land probably isn't the smartest
[20:32] idea. So instead the shots 1100 miles
[20:36] away on the outskirts of Mexico City, where it was much safer.
[20:39] But film and location was essential for the film, Deacon
[20:42] said. This has to be another world.
[20:45] It's key to the character of Kit.
[20:46] It's got to be totally alien to her experience.
[20:49] Bill, you said the Scouts found this place in Mexico City.
[20:52] It was really close to the reality of Juarez, the wide
[20:54] streets, those shopping centers, the architecture, the poverty.
[20:57] Mexico City is like an urban monster.
[20:59] It certainly looks like it. It's huge, it's intricate, it
[21:02] dominates the screen. It's full of decay.
[21:05] It's terrifying. It's not a great advert for
[21:07] tourism or for Mexico City, is it?
[21:09] It isn't. For that.
[21:12] Matter. There's a message in the hill
[21:14] surrounded Juarez and it translates to the Bible is the
[21:18] truth read. It Yeah, Yeah.
[21:20] Great. So now we've already felt a
[21:22] little bit of tension. We can see that there's a car
[21:24] tracking them. Everyone leaves them to kind of
[21:27] go towards the border. They think that they've got a
[21:29] lane open, but they don't. Yes.
[21:31] So now they're just trying to get through as quickly as
[21:32] possible. And you hear over the radio as
[21:34] the portal would stop. It's a fuck up what we're going
[21:37] to do now. And the great thing about this
[21:40] scene, the great thing about this sequence is it should be
[21:42] studied in film school. And I think it probably is
[21:44] because I haven't been for a while.
[21:46] But it's just the way that this is set up, the way that it's
[21:49] blocked, the way that the acting works, the shot choices and the
[21:52] sound design and everything the film you've puts in there to
[21:55] accentuate this build of tension.
[21:59] Because everything that we need to hear that's important is on a
[22:02] radio that can say we'll unclear.
[22:04] Now it's you're like, what? What did he say?
[22:06] Shit. But we are so in this
[22:08] environment that's hard to hear and it's hard to focus and it's
[22:12] hard to know where we're looking.
[22:13] And Emily Blunt is us in this situation.
[22:15] Get out of the car. No, she doesn't.
[22:17] She just moves over the other side.
[22:19] Like, what the fuck's going on? It makes perfect sense.
[22:21] You know that dog bargain that doesn't need to happen, but it's
[22:25] wonderful that it does because you moved over and there's
[22:27] nothing worse than something that you can't stop immediately.
[22:29] You can't just go over that dog and say, oh, come on, like give
[22:33] it a break. You know, it's not like 5 easy
[22:35] pieces waiting to go over the top, bark in its face.
[22:38] But it's just then you hear like, OK, red Impala, 2 lanes
[22:41] over my 10, right? And I'm thinking fucking always
[22:44] 10:00 there's 12 right already. I'm dead, so I'll be rubbish.
[22:48] And then it's the green civic, 2 lanes over.
[22:51] And then 100 just puts his gun behind Kate and says, just put
[22:53] your window down. And there's this really great
[22:55] moment in the cinematography as that window comes down.
[22:57] You hear the sound. It just illuminates his face a
[22:59] little bit, a tiny, tiny bit. If you watch it again, like he's
[23:03] starting to realize what's going on on.
[23:04] We're starting to realize what's going on.
[23:06] And then over the radio, they actually say they can see our
[23:09] lane clear and if it's coming, it's coming now.
[23:12] Wow. Which if we actually heard that
[23:14] and somebody said that, it would remove all the tension
[23:17] completely because you're like, right, OK, I know what to
[23:19] expect, but puts it over the radio and keeps it on the sound
[23:21] design. And then the no, if you know, if
[23:24] they move, you move. If they engage, you engage.
[23:26] That's all of the information that's been given over the
[23:28] radio. Like everything's there for me
[23:30] to make you feel calm. But it's all kept at arm's
[23:32] length. And as soon as they open that
[23:34] door, they are out the car. They are out of that.
[23:37] If they leave, you leave. So as soon as that, just keep an
[23:40] eye on the handles. As soon as the handles turn,
[23:42] they're there and they're just surround these cars and they
[23:44] know exactly what they're doing and it's just bang, bang, bang,
[23:46] put them down. They actually want to kill them.
[23:48] They want them out of there. It's just so precisely done.
[23:51] And then my kid sees that the state police in the mirror.
[23:54] And then you get that flashback of what Halohanno said is
[23:56] they're known always the good guys.
[23:58] She spins around, she shoots him, but it's only when she sees
[24:00] them in the mirror and the reflection and what we see from
[24:02] her point of view. I think it's just absolutely
[24:04] wonderfully done, wonderfully executed.
[24:06] And them jumping in the boot as well to cover them from the back
[24:09] as they leave. And you know that the safety.
[24:12] And then when they drive into the compound and you get that
[24:14] incredible wide shot where they're arguing about it when
[24:16] they've got Gleam on the car and they know they're going to have
[24:18] to try and get them over the border from that moment to when
[24:20] they arrive back. That is an absolute lesson in
[24:24] how you create tension and how you deliver and how the audience
[24:26] can't really recover from it for the rest of the film.
[24:29] It's incredible. It's an unbelievable sequence,
[24:31] so tense. And there's that wonderful last
[24:34] line as well. This is going to be on every
[24:36] front page of every newspaper in America.
[24:38] Won't even make the papers in El Paso.
[24:40] Yeah, this happens all the time. You've just seen it and nobody
[24:44] cares. Yeah, it's striking that they
[24:46] just leave, what, 810 dead bodies and just get.
[24:49] The hell out of there. Yeah, it's so good.
[24:52] It's so, so well done. And just like not filming in
[24:55] Juarez, shooting at the Mexico USA border crossing would have
[24:59] paused far too many problems. It would have holded traffic
[25:02] considerably and posted a significant security threat.
[25:05] So a recreation of the Bridge of America's was constructed in the
[25:08] parking lot in Albuquerque. Nice.
[25:11] I mean, it scans, it looks, it looks legit, it looks genuine.
[25:14] Really does it. Really does design, yeah.
[25:17] So an intense hair is and hop across the border and back again
[25:21] and an outstanding first act in security.
[25:24] Unbelievable. The director.
[25:31] The man who's gone from strength to strength since making this
[25:33] film, but he also had been making movies for 15 years
[25:36] before it. Denny Villeneuve is the man
[25:38] directing, and Matt is the man to talk about it first.
[25:41] Take it away, Matt. I think ruthless is the word
[25:44] that comes to mind when I think of his work here, because
[25:47] everything's very paired back. Everything is stripped to the
[25:50] most basic of essentials. There's no scene that has
[25:53] anything that it doesn't need in it.
[25:55] And as a result of that, there's this level of tension that runs
[25:58] through the film and it pretty much doesn't relent from first
[26:01] scene to the last. Like even in the scenes of
[26:03] dialogue, the tensions in the background because our main
[26:06] characters in a foreign country where she doesn't understand any
[26:08] of the customs or to be honest, anything that's going on.
[26:12] And I think V Love deserves immense credit for sustaining
[26:15] that tension. Every scene feels clipped.
[26:18] There's no fat here. He doesn't let any scene
[26:20] outstairs welcome. Nothing drags because that's the
[26:23] pace the film needs. If the film had a slower pace, I
[26:26] think it might be a bit pretentious, a bit self
[26:28] indulgent, but feeling love never lets it get there.
[26:30] And all the set pieces that we've talked about, and we'll
[26:33] talk about the half this energy to them.
[26:35] Like when you've twanged a guitar string, but you're still
[26:37] holding the note down and you're getting as much out of it as you
[26:40] can. So yes, the infants from the
[26:43] likes of Traffic, French Connection, they are very clear
[26:45] here. But all the same, it's got a
[26:47] level of control from feeling of where he rings every last drop
[26:51] of tension that he can out of it making food and you squeeze in a
[26:53] lemon because you need some lemon juice.
[26:55] That lemon is absolutely born dry by the end of the.
[26:58] Yeah, yeah. I've mentioned in the previous
[27:01] sequence that the shot choice and the camera coverage feel
[27:04] like Matt, Kate and the rest of the motorcade that they're in
[27:06] are being tracked in Juarez, and there's nothing that confirms
[27:09] confirms that other than just the visuals.
[27:11] And this is Denis Villeneuve all the way through.
[27:14] He doesn't spoon feed us with exposition.
[27:16] There's very, very little of it. And when we do get it, it's
[27:19] gradual and reluctantly provided generally by Matt.
[27:22] Not this Matt, of course. We don't need to know about
[27:25] Kate's back story or a divorce. It's right there in her face, in
[27:28] her performance, in her physicality, the way she's
[27:30] framed. Phil Nerf frames Alejandro in a
[27:32] way that makes him a formidable killer not to be messed with,
[27:35] but also a man of sensitivity and values and own.
[27:39] Get that from the visuals and the physical performance.
[27:42] The only dialogue that I pick up in this film are those zingers
[27:45] that we talked about that Alejandro and Matt have.
[27:47] Otherwise, it may as well be a silent film.
[27:51] Turn down the volume and you'll see just how visual Villeneuve
[27:54] is. And yeah, there are those
[27:56] incredible shots of the landscape we'll talk about more
[27:58] than when we get to Deacons, but Villeneuve strips away all the
[28:01] unnecessary dialogue and takes you through this film and tells
[28:04] you what's going on by sight alone.
[28:06] It's it's an incredible skill. Also, the costume design tells
[28:10] its own visual story. Kate is clad in blue at the
[28:12] start, the blue of the law, the good guys.
[28:15] But then her T-shirt choices grow increasingly lighter as the
[28:19] film progresses, and by the end she's wearing a white shirt, as
[28:22] if the Do the Right Thing attitude has been completely
[28:24] washed away. Yeah, Reggie mentions that as
[28:27] well. It's like 1 shirt a week.
[28:28] Yes, he does. Yeah, brilliant.
[28:30] Yeah, she needs a new bra though.
[28:31] She do it? Well, that's a lazy number,
[28:33] yeah. A lazy number.
[28:37] And considering we're talking about feeling those visuals, it
[28:39] seems appropriate that we introduce our first Patreon
[28:42] question. OK.
[28:43] We mentioned at the top there are many benefits of becoming an
[28:45] ACRM patron, and this is one of them.
[28:47] You get the chance to ask a question for the film that we're
[28:49] talking about. Our first question is from
[28:52] Andrew Walton. Hello, Andrew.
[28:53] Hello, Andrew. Andrew says I think Denis
[28:55] Villeneuve has the best eye in cinema right now.
[28:58] What are the directors do you think offer the most
[29:00] jaw-dropping shots? He also says love the pod.
[29:03] Thanks for all the great episodes.
[29:06] Thanks man. No problem.
[29:07] Thank you, Andrew. Thank you, Andrew.
[29:09] Westie, other directors and jaw-dropping shots.
[29:13] I mean, how long have you got this question, isn't it?
[29:16] I mean, it's the reason I started, you know, really
[29:19] watching films, getting into films because of the visual
[29:21] medium of it. And then I started to appreciate
[29:23] the sound design and how that all tied together, then
[29:25] soundtracks on top of it and how that ties together the visuals.
[29:27] It is a visual medium. It's how it started.
[29:30] So I'm not going to get all, you know, pretentious and be all,
[29:32] well, it needs to be there. So it needs to be that.
[29:34] So I've got a few, and I think a few that if people don't know
[29:37] listening to them, then they can check them out.
[29:39] But for me, these are just my personal kind of five that I
[29:42] just think I always come back to.
[29:44] And I always say if it wasn't for these guys, then I just
[29:47] wouldn't be interested in watching films.
[29:49] I mean, the first one to me is Kubrick.
[29:51] You talk about the shine in 2001, Barry Lyndon.
[29:54] Even if it's not a film for everybody, but visually it's
[29:56] absolutely stunning. Paul Thomas Anderson for me, I
[29:59] think is overlooked for his visuals and to look at There
[30:01] Will Be Blood is so influential and Boogie Nights as a debut is
[30:05] ridiculous. How visual?
[30:07] For me a big influence is Terrence Malik.
[30:09] I think Days of Heaven, Tree of Life, Badlands, any of them for
[30:14] Vista is always going to Live. But two that are really I think
[30:17] influential to the directors that I've just mentioned and
[30:20] especially the only of as well as Kurosara.
[30:22] I think if you look at Ron, you look at 7 Samurai, look the way
[30:25] frame shots wasn't a lot of moving camera.
[30:27] There wasn't a lot of technology around where they could move the
[30:30] camera. So everything's it does have
[30:32] this kind of really epic feel. And Tarkovsky for me, if you
[30:35] look at the Sacrifice Solaris stalk.
[30:38] Solaris, yeah. Just beautiful, absolutely
[30:40] beautiful visual filmmaking. So I'll go with them five and
[30:43] I'll stop there. OK, well, very restrained again,
[30:46] Wes. Thank you.
[30:47] I could have gone on. That's fine.
[30:51] You know, it doesn't pain me to say it, but I'm going to say it
[30:54] pains me to say it. From a visual point of view, you
[30:56] can't go too far wrong with Chris Nolan.
[30:59] I'm not maybe the biggest fan of his work, but I think his
[31:02] composition work is outstanding and I kind of had in mind people
[31:06] working now, and I know obviously Scorsese is working
[31:09] now. I try to give it a bit more of a
[31:11] more contemporary edge. However, I have thrown in Ridley
[31:14] Scott as well because I just instantly think visuals.
[31:17] I mean, he just doesn't he sleep now, doesn't he?
[31:19] Glad you get it too. Yeah, just whatever.
[31:20] Yeah, I do. That's fine, you just dropped
[31:22] now 3 hour epic because I think there's three. 100 years old.
[31:25] I'll just do Gladiator 3. That's fine.
[31:27] I'm bothered forever. That's ridiculous.
[31:31] I think Guillermo del Toro is such a unique eye, particularly
[31:34] from a fantastical point of view, and to break from the
[31:37] pack, I'm going to throw in a young filmmaker who I'm excited
[31:41] to see more of. She's called Akasha Stephenson.
[31:44] She directed the first Omen. Not.
[31:46] The original Omen from 1976. The first Omen, which was the
[31:49] prequel which came out a couple of years ago.
[31:51] Yeah, Goodfell. That could have gone down a more
[31:54] familiar route of throwaway legacy horror sequels, but I
[31:56] think she brings something unique to the table.
[31:58] I think her visuals were a standout and stayed in my head
[32:00] for four weeks after, so I'm expecting big things from her in
[32:03] the future. Brilliant for you to be
[32:05] impressed with that as well. I mean, you're a man to
[32:07] impressed with that because you're immediately going in
[32:09] there wanting to hate it. Yeah, yeah.
[32:11] Come on. Come on.
[32:12] Come on, let's see what you've got.
[32:13] OK, go on. Actually, that's quite good.
[32:14] Yeah, that's good then. Actually, that's amazing.
[32:16] If you. Yes.
[32:20] So yeah, Cash Stevenson. And if you haven't seen the
[32:22] first omen, go for it. Don't.
[32:24] Be put off, It's good. And Matt, what about you?
[32:26] jaw-dropping visuals? Who do you like?
[32:28] I've also tried to keep it more contemporary and a thought about
[32:32] people who maybe don't get as much attention as some of the
[32:34] big names, but who I wanted to kind of give a bit of a shout
[32:37] out to. I think Chad Teleski, who's made
[32:40] all the John Wick films. Obviously you think of those and
[32:44] you think the action sequences in the choreography book, the
[32:46] way it's filmed, the way it's lit.
[32:48] He has created such a distinct visual sense in, I mean, one
[32:52] genre, one sub genre, really one franchise, which I think is
[32:55] pretty incredible. I think.
[32:57] I mean, Wesley will definitely agree with me on this, but
[32:59] Robert Eggers as well. Just his.
[33:02] Films look like nothing else at the moment.
[33:04] Again, just so completely unique in his world, somebody who
[33:08] hasn't made a film for a while but he's still around.
[33:10] Hopefully he'll make something soon.
[33:11] Is there one call Y who's made films like In the Mood for Love
[33:15] 2046? Tracking Express doesn't mean
[33:17] very small scale in the Edmund films.
[33:20] Absolutely beautiful. Done.
[33:22] Beautiful. Beautiful stuff.
[33:23] I want to give a shout out to George Miller as well.
[33:26] Just the way he can action big GM the best.
[33:29] George Best shot like George Miller.
[33:31] Exactly. And then the last one, I suppose
[33:37] like your last choice, Luke, somebody who kind of I'm hoping
[33:39] will go on to bigger and even better things.
[33:42] But Rose Glass, who's made See It, Mod and then Love Lies
[33:46] Bleeding, very different films, but both have got such a unique
[33:50] visual sense to both them. So I'm very excited to see what
[33:53] Rose Glass will do in the future.
[33:54] Very much, yeah. I like those two films a lot.
[33:57] Yeah. Wonderful.
[33:58] OK. Well, thank you very much for
[34:00] the question, Andrew. I hope you.
[34:01] Like. Our answers.
[34:02] Bringing it back to Denny Villeneuve, Westie, your
[34:05] thoughts on him as director on Sicario?
[34:07] I mean, I really rate him as a director.
[34:09] I think he's just a very honest human being.
[34:11] And I think his films are very honest.
[34:13] I mean, if you read the screenplay, he's gone through
[34:16] that screenplay and said, I'm not doing that, I'm not doing
[34:18] that, I'm not doing that. He loves mystery.
[34:20] And I think real life is about mystery.
[34:23] You don't know everything that's going on.
[34:25] And the more that you interpret in your mind, the more crazy you
[34:29] get by just trying to get your version of the story and your
[34:32] version of what's going on. And I don't, you don't see
[34:34] everything that's laid down. And I think he loves that,
[34:38] especially in this film. He loves mystery and he loves
[34:40] illusion and he loves allusion. And he loves to say, well, is
[34:44] that what I'm talking about or is it not?
[34:46] That's up to you. That's up to the audience.
[34:48] And he definitely has a vision for this.
[34:50] And the vision that I get from this is that he's going to hold
[34:52] these cards close to his chest and play what he wants to.
[34:56] And what I respect mostly from watching this film again and
[34:58] again and again, is that he never shows his full hand.
[35:01] He's got 5 cards and he always shows you 3.
[35:04] Every time you go back the film, you see a different set of
[35:06] three. You never see the full 5.
[35:08] It's got so much confidence and so much, I don't care what you
[35:12] think about this. This is the film I'm making kind
[35:14] of vibe to it. I just really love that.
[35:17] I really, really love it. I love the fact that he's pulled
[35:19] influences from, You know There Will Be Blood.
[35:21] He's pulled in massive influences from the corns with
[35:23] this, you know, especially in the right.
[35:25] And he just, he's taking the Taylor Chariton script and just
[35:28] went and turned that no cover of the script by deleting about
[35:30] your 30% of it, just getting rid of that.
[35:32] And we're going to make it mysterious and it is what it is.
[35:34] It ends like No Country for Old Men and exactly the same.
[35:37] It's just got this real ambiguity to it and I love that.
[35:39] I think he's an incredible director.
[35:41] I'll always stand with him. Yes, he does get a little bit
[35:43] above his station sometimes, but everything he produces is really
[35:46] interesting. It's really engaging, it's
[35:48] really powerful and it's really necessary cinema.
[35:51] Great work. You can tell how much you
[35:52] control he's got of the whole thing.
[35:54] Yeah, he just knows what it's going to be, but he knows what
[35:56] it's not going to be. Which is more important?
[35:59] Very much. And it's not going to be Taylor
[36:00] Sheridan script. No, that's what it's not going
[36:02] to be. No, it's not in.
[36:04] His previous film was Prisoners, which as we said, also shot by
[36:07] Roger Deakins, and Deakin said both films belong to the same
[36:11] cinematic alphabet. As he described it, both the
[36:14] movies wanted to embrace nature and he switched the dog to
[36:17] pressing fall light for the harsh light of the Chihuahua
[36:19] desert, he said. It was very harsh, very cruel
[36:22] sunlight. Cinematic alphabet.
[36:24] I'm stealing that, and going forward, if we cut that bit out
[36:26] and then I'm just going to read yeah, in future episodes.
[36:29] People don't know that Deakins have the annotator.
[36:32] That's great. It is great Phil Nerf was
[36:35] motivated to direct Sicario as a geopolitical commentary, the
[36:39] impact of politics and international affairs on
[36:42] geography. He took particular inspiration
[36:44] from the likes of Zero Dark 30 and The Hurt Locker with I think
[36:47] you can see that in the colour palette.
[36:48] On the Hurt Locker, definitely. He just cooks to a wide shot for
[36:51] seemingly no reason. Yeah, OK.
[36:53] Yeah. That's right.
[36:55] That's. Yeah.
[36:56] So Phil Nerf proven that he's got the goods to pack up his
[36:59] burgeoning reputation with Sicario.
[37:01] Expertly played. Absolutely.
[37:06] The cast. A real strong three horse race
[37:11] in the cast. The morally questionable father
[37:14] figures are coming up. But sat right between them is
[37:17] the idealistic FBI agent Kate Mesa.
[37:20] And we've got just the man to talk about her incredible
[37:22] performance. Matt, over to you.
[37:24] Yes, excellent. Like she always is.
[37:27] Of the bad Emily Blunt films, probably not that many, but
[37:30] some. But of the bad Emily Blunt
[37:32] performances? Never.
[37:34] Never. I mean, if anyone isn't a paid
[37:36] 1, sign up and you can hear us talk about this and A Quiet
[37:40] Place, where we go into both of her performances, but this is
[37:44] one of her very best. And the interesting thing about
[37:46] Kid as a character is she spent so much of this film as a
[37:49] reactive character. She's not driving the narrative.
[37:52] She's long for the ride because she is the audience.
[37:55] She's representing us. And if she's confused about
[37:57] something and in the dark, we should be in the dark and
[38:00] confused at the same time a lot of the times.
[38:02] We don't see things until she sees things, right?
[38:04] Exactly. Yeah.
[38:05] Exactly. And if she gets disturbed by it,
[38:08] that tells us, well, we need to be disturbed by it because if
[38:10] it's freaking her out, it should definitely freak us out as well.
[38:13] I mean, we've talked about the drive over the border in New
[38:16] Mexico. So much of that is just down to
[38:18] her facial reactions, again, with no dialogue, not seeing,
[38:22] but every thought again, what am I doing here?
[38:24] What's going on? Who's this guy?
[38:26] Why am I involved? And the other interesting thing
[38:29] is the fact that she's leading this film as a female character
[38:32] because they in the wrong hands with the wrong bit of casting,
[38:35] with the wrong bit of direction, the wrong bit of writing.
[38:38] Kate could come across as weak or stupid or naive and just
[38:41] anything but. She is maybe a bit naive, but
[38:44] that's the point, you know? And her unease at everything
[38:47] going on around her, that's what fuels the tension in the film.
[38:50] So when you put a character like her who is definitely smart,
[38:53] definitely capable of stepping up interaction when the woman
[38:56] calls for it, you know she has no problem pulling a gun on Tell
[38:59] Toro. She gets into it with Matt at
[39:01] the end as well when she realizes how shaded they are.
[39:04] Put a character like her in a situation like this that just
[39:07] elevates the story and the tension to a massive degree, and
[39:10] Blunt just sells every little bit of kit as a character
[39:13] brilliantly. It's just a wonderful, wonderful
[39:16] performance. It's like, tell me you're Clary
[39:18] Stalin without telling me you're.
[39:20] Yeah, yeah. And without seeming like an
[39:22] inferior copy of Clary Star. It's like a sister or something.
[39:26] Yeah, yeah, totally is. Yeah.
[39:27] I think the fact that I'm not thinking about Clary Stalin when
[39:30] I'm watching this is credit to her performance that she makes
[39:32] it around. Because it is basically on
[39:34] paper. I love that moment, right The
[39:36] star, when she's asked by the guy what she wants him to say to
[39:39] the US Attorney and she replies the truth.
[39:41] The truth. Yeah.
[39:42] Yeah, that may as well be Kate's middle name.
[39:44] Yeah, you know where you are, don't you?
[39:45] Straight away. Yeah, yeah, absolutely love.
[39:47] But don't you ever seen Blunt in the young Victoria and was
[39:50] convinced that she was the person for this rule?
[39:52] She took the rule despite giving birth to her daughter only four
[39:55] months prior to filming Sicario. Wow.
[39:58] I mean, that's incredible. Yeah.
[40:00] The writer of Sicario, Taylor Sheridan, based Kate on an
[40:03] actual person that he spoke to when doing his research.
[40:05] She remains nameless, but she had the equivalent job in real
[40:08] life that Matt Brolin's character has in this film.
[40:12] Oh, really? Right, OK.
[40:13] He said she was 5 foot 405 lbs, but you couldn't tell that she
[40:17] worked at it and you could see the tour.
[40:19] He thought it was like a fascinating combination of this
[40:22] kind of small looking individual in this position of absolute
[40:25] power. Yeah, like a Jack Russell.
[40:29] Furious Jack Russell. Not the comparison I was
[40:39] expecting. No.
[40:41] And Blunt's research included spending time with a handful of
[40:43] FBI agents. The shy Lorna characteristics
[40:47] she saw in all of the woman she spoke to made their way into the
[40:49] character of Kate. Pretty You can tell that she's
[40:51] done her research. In the original script, there
[40:54] was a nude scene between Kate and Hal Andro.
[40:56] She refused to do it, and del Toro backed that decision.
[40:59] He said that having worked together on the Wolfman a few
[41:02] years earlier, they've grown close.
[41:04] Like brother and sister and and you'd around each other would
[41:06] have been very uncomfortable. Well, that and the fact that the
[41:09] scene would have been completely unnecessary considering.
[41:12] What we've got absolutely out of place, yeah.
[41:14] It's a different film that's a different.
[41:16] Film, really, if that's an 80s film.
[41:20] So perfect casting for the role of Kate.
[41:22] This is a highlight from Emily Bunt in a career of highlight.
[41:26] Yeah. Our second cast member is the
[41:30] man shaking the tree and not giving much information away at
[41:33] all. It is Josh Brolin, unfamiliar
[41:35] ground on the Mexico US border as Matt Graver.
[41:39] And I see unfamiliar ground because this film and this
[41:41] performance feels like a distant cousin of No Country for Old
[41:44] Men. We've talked about it already.
[41:47] Yeah. Both set on the border, both
[41:48] about drugs, both Stalin, Brolin, both shot by deacons.
[41:52] There's certainly something familiar about all this,
[41:55] something which I think Villeneuve knows by casting
[41:57] Brolin and to an extent del Toro, considering his part in
[42:00] Soderbergh's traffic, which covers some of the things like
[42:03] you said, Westie. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[42:04] I love the moral ambiguity of Matt.
[42:07] He's clearly a bastard. Yeah, Massive.
[42:09] Yeah. Who doesn't care about anybody
[42:12] else, really, but he's got that big picture approach and you can
[42:15] understand that this mission needs somebody like him.
[42:19] And. At the heart of it, he's doing
[42:20] good, but a lot of his actions point to the country to get him
[42:24] to that good place. Yeah.
[42:26] I suppose really, Brolin doesn't have to do too much at all.
[42:29] He's got no back story, no arc. He's there to stand in front of
[42:33] Kate and Reggie, give a bit of exposition, but not much.
[42:36] Had a splash of tough talk. And then the rest of the film,
[42:38] he's behaving overly smug, like he knows more than anybody else
[42:42] in the room, which, of course, he does.
[42:44] But he leaves the lasting impression because of this
[42:47] overwhelming screen presence that he has.
[42:51] He doesn't show any aggression in the film.
[42:53] The furthest he goes is with Kate at the end.
[42:54] And that could be argued as, you know, self-defense.
[42:57] Yeah. Subduing.
[42:58] Isn't it? But I've got no doubt that he's
[43:01] a mean cat and that is because it's the visual language which
[43:05] is executed perfectly to give me this impression by Villeneuve
[43:08] and also because of Brolin's presence.
[43:12] All this despite the casual dress and flip flops which I
[43:14] mean do undermine and tough exterior generally.
[43:18] But he's absolutely not to be messed with.
[43:20] He's also probably the most humorous character in the film.
[43:24] The side maybe from Reggie. Yeah, Yeah.
[43:27] So there are like various Shades of Grey in the character of
[43:30] Mass. And Brolin pulls that off just
[43:32] expertly, not really working with too much from a character
[43:36] point of view, which I think is very impressive.
[43:39] Yeah, yeah. He seems like to be about four
[43:41] different characters in one character that you don't quite
[43:44] know who you're going to get each scene.
[43:46] And I think there's a lot of physical presence from them,
[43:48] like you're saying. But he smacks his hands together
[43:51] a lot. Like, come on.
[43:52] And you saw this slap in motion. And I think the flip flops that
[43:55] you mentioned are very, very important.
[43:56] He just does not care about rules.
[43:59] It doesn't feel like there's anybody that he answers to.
[44:02] I think the fact that he is wearing flip flops and he's
[44:05] wearing like a casual open short sleeve shirt T-shirt in that
[44:09] official meeting where everybody's got a suit and tie
[44:11] on. Yeah, and he's just leaning
[44:12] back. He's not giving shit.
[44:13] He's just like, yeah, whatever. The only person who could pull
[44:16] that off is the only person who doesn't answer to anyone.
[44:19] Exactly, Yeah. Brilliant look and Brolin who
[44:22] just worked on Everest. The film, not the mountain
[44:24] itself obviously. And the shoot had been a bit of
[44:26] a slog. So as such, he turned down the
[44:29] role of Matt Graver just because he wanted some recuperation time
[44:32] but haven't worked with him in the past.
[44:34] Roger Deakins reached out personally for him to reconsider
[44:37] because Brolin was the only man in the frame for the role, and
[44:40] Brolin was so moved by Deakins Cheshire that he did take the
[44:43] gig. Nice reach out for the big man
[44:45] Wes. Do you do that?
[44:46] Wouldn't. You obviously a cup of tea.
[44:51] I'd go and do that. So with enough screen presence
[44:56] to fill the whole frame, Brolin does a great job of reinforcing
[44:59] the central themes of Sicario. Yeah, definitely.
[45:04] Finally, it's over to the Lone Wolf, the menacing mystery of
[45:07] Alejandro Gillick and Westie are the man to talk about him.
[45:10] Absolutely. I mean, what a performance.
[45:12] This is unbelievable. How much misery, how much pain,
[45:16] how much menace and how great is Del Toro with doing all of those
[45:20] things at once? It's just so I'm just his
[45:23] eyebrows. Just when, you know, we're
[45:25] talking about that bit on the plane when he wakes up, it's
[45:27] like, yeah, I'm OK. And it's just the car tells
[45:29] that's your thing. They say, yeah.
[45:31] And just looking out the window and just.
[45:33] And he's just, there's nothing else to do.
[45:35] He's just locked in that shot. And it is just, it is pretty
[45:37] much a head and shoulders. It's a close up.
[45:40] But the pain that's on his face, the realization that his
[45:43] character has so much behind him that he's so nasty as well.
[45:47] But we don't see how nasty. He's so focused, but we don't
[45:50] see how focused. And then you always, in the back
[45:53] of my mind, it always freaks me out that he was a lawyer and now
[45:58] he's this assassin. He is the sicario.
[46:01] I mean, he is the antagonist of the film.
[46:03] It is his film. It is about his story, it's his
[46:06] arc. It's about him getting revenge
[46:09] for what's happened to him and his family.
[46:11] It's him getting closure on it, which he never actually gets.
[46:13] So it's not Kate's story. It's got nothing to do with her.
[46:16] It's got everything to do with viewing his story but seeing the
[46:20] arc from the side, like would normally see the arc and we'll
[46:22] be going through it with them over the bridge.
[46:24] This is like sitting on a boat watching people watching him go
[46:27] over the bridge and watch his arc from the from the stream and
[46:30] be, Oh yeah, it's about him now. Let's join him for the last 10
[46:33] minutes. And that's how it plays out.
[46:36] And there's no exposition in this film whatsoever until the
[46:39] last 15 minutes. And then it's just explanation.
[46:42] It's not exposition which is going to tell you what's coming.
[46:44] It's going to be like something's coming.
[46:46] You don't know what? And then it's explanation.
[46:48] Even when he's got sunglasses on, you can tell what his eyes
[46:50] are doing. It's it's massive.
[46:53] It's I don't know how it works. I don't know how he does it, but
[46:55] he's got such a presence here that doesn't, and I've said this
[46:59] before about many, many actors, but I think del Toro here
[47:01] absolutely nails it and that he's got such a presence that
[47:04] doesn't take away from anyone else in the scene.
[47:06] It really just adds to it. And you know, you can tell.
[47:10] You know what? Bernthal looks up.
[47:11] He just goes and he just makes that noise.
[47:14] There would have been a line of dialogue there just being like,
[47:16] hey motherfucker, that was something or whatever.
[47:18] Sheridan's right there will just be now.
[47:20] He's just went on Switch and that's it.
[47:22] It's that little bit there that you just go, wow, you just kind
[47:27] of sink down and go. I actually believe Felicio Del
[47:29] Toro is capable of doing this in real life.
[47:32] Yes. I don't know where where he
[47:35] draws the line with like, but if he turned up with a gun and it
[47:38] would be like, I wouldn't go. I hate Felicio Del Toro.
[47:40] How you doing? I'd be like oh fuck.
[47:42] What about doing? What about doing which phone did
[47:46] I give a six to? Like, I can't remember.
[47:49] That's that's how I'd feel if you turn about.
[47:51] It's so believable, it's so nuanced, it's so emotional.
[47:55] It's got such weight. It's so heavy, but he carries it
[47:59] with such panache and style. But yeah, just stay miles away
[48:03] from me, please. It's certainly personified this
[48:06] performance. You scared of the dog?
[48:08] Just that line. Everyone could say that line,
[48:10] but him saying it you're like, actually now I am, yes.
[48:15] Thanks for that. Yeah, cheers.
[48:16] Have you think about it to that level?
[48:18] But yeah, now I am. As we've been alluding to, in
[48:21] the original screenplay, Alejandro had much more
[48:24] dialogue. The character explained his
[48:26] background to Kate a number of times, which allowed del Toro to
[48:29] get in the mind of the character, but he also said it.
[48:32] Felt a little. Stiff to have someone you met 15
[48:34] minutes ago suddenly telling you what happened to him and who he
[48:37] is. Yeah, yeah.
[48:39] So Feel Love then worked with del Toro to take away the
[48:41] majority of his lines, which was actually around 90% of his
[48:45] dialogue. And VLF said movies are about
[48:48] movement, character and presence.
[48:50] Beneath you had all that. Absolutely, yeah.
[48:52] Absolutely. Fair enough.
[48:53] Yeah. Actually the lines he's got you
[48:54] could you probably take away another 20% just.
[48:58] A silent performance. You could.
[49:00] You actually could. Yeah, it's an incredible
[49:02] performance. Less is more as we're talking
[49:07] about the big Beneath Co BDT. We've got our second Patreon
[49:11] question, and this one comes from Catherine Price.
[49:14] Hello, Catherine. Hello, Catherine.
[49:15] Hello, Catherine. Catherine says hi lads, Exciting
[49:18] to see one of the double feature wins getting the classic
[49:20] treatment. Well, you know, we're all.
[49:21] Last time, yeah. Sorry you welcome so long.
[49:25] I'll I'll stick with me guns this.
[49:27] Is #3 though, isn't it has been Carly does wear Cuckoo's Nest
[49:30] and now this Yes, yes. So it's it's about a 7% hit rate
[49:34] so far. And.
[49:38] It can't be a recent one, obviously.
[49:40] Yes, exactly. We've got a less than dust
[49:42] settle a little bit. Yeah.
[49:43] Yeah. But anyhow, Catherine says
[49:45] Benicio del Toro may not always be in the best movies, but more
[49:48] often than not, he's the best part of whatever he's in.
[49:51] And yet, after his banner year of traffic and Snack in 2000,
[49:54] Benicio's notable mainstream roles are being few and far
[49:57] between, with Sakai Royo arguably at the top of the list.
[50:00] Now, 10 years later, he's leading the next Wes Anderson
[50:03] film and Co starring with Luckily or in the next PTA film.
[50:08] Catherine says what you'll make of the gaps in his mainstream
[50:11] career. Is Benicio being selective or
[50:13] being overlooked? She also wants to know what our
[50:16] underrated Benicio performances are.
[50:18] And she says as we end there, what I hope is Benicio was
[50:21] leading Manny. What roles or collaborations
[50:23] would you like to see? Me Who?
[50:25] She says thanks for all you do. Now go ahead and finish your
[50:27] meal. That's cool Now, Captain.
[50:30] Thanks. Very.
[50:32] Much she actually her question in her passage was much bigger
[50:36] than that, but she gave us car plans to edit around that so.
[50:39] Well, I've been. Still talking?
[50:40] She's obviously a huge fan so. Yeah, that's it.
[50:43] OK, let's answer these three questions.
[50:45] Yeah. Let's do it.
[50:46] Yeah. So, Matt, go for it.
[50:48] Three questions from Catherine Shoot.
[50:50] Okay, so I think he just has to be selective because there's not
[50:54] a director working today who wouldn't want him in a film.
[50:58] He just has that presence that he just only does what he's
[51:01] going to enjoy. And if that means he takes a
[51:02] couple years off, he'll take a couple years off.
[51:05] Underrated. I'm going to go with Sin City
[51:07] because I don't think that film gets really viewed as an actor's
[51:10] film. It kind of gets viewed.
[51:12] I think Rodriguez does on screen, you know, and then doing
[51:15] a whole thing with like a magazine stuck in his head.
[51:19] That's. Basically, it's not time out is
[51:21] it either, Matt, it's. Like a good magazine that's just
[51:23] specified? Definitely.
[51:25] That would have been really, really odd.
[51:34] Rules are collaboration to main T bonds.
[51:35] I just want them to constantly be working with anyone.
[51:38] So anyone good to be honest. I mean, we've kind of talked
[51:41] about Wes Anderson in the past. I'm more interested in Wes
[51:44] Anderson's new from because of Del Toro than anything else.
[51:47] I'll be honestly. Agree with that.
[51:49] A particular role. I mean, honestly, anything but.
[51:52] He'd be a surprise pick as the next James Bond, but I'd be
[51:55] there for us, yeah. At the end of Sicario for two
[51:59] hours. He's been in there.
[52:01] What was he licensed? Licensed to kill Yeah, yeah.
[52:03] Give a nice nice. Honeymoon.
[52:06] Yeah. Ridiculous.
[52:07] Performance. I'd love that.
[52:08] Really fun. I'd love that, actually.
[52:09] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that would be good.
[52:11] Yeah. And Westie Catherines questions.
[52:14] Yeah. OK.
[52:14] So being selective, I think when he did cheer Part 1 and Part 2
[52:18] was Soderbergh, I think that took a lot of wind out of his
[52:21] sails. I think they thought that was
[52:22] going to be massive and I think it kind of bombed a little bit
[52:25] unnecessarily. So it was very ambitious
[52:28] project. It's all in Spanish as well,
[52:30] isn't it? And it is all in Spanish.
[52:31] I mean, yeah, come on guys. You know, it's a two-part that
[52:35] was kind of all filmed at the same time.
[52:37] Did the Wolf Man came back two years later again, You know, not
[52:41] massive and he's just kind of dipping his toe a little bit.
[52:43] Inherent vice, not massive in 2014.
[52:46] And then he comes back with Sicario, which I think he's
[52:48] ready in 2015 to come back again.
[52:51] Underrated performance of The Way of the Gun for me every
[52:53] single time. Yes, you love that one, don't
[52:55] you? Wonderful enough.
[52:56] Really, really understated. Really, really brilliant.
[52:58] Underrated film. It was a Mcquarrel, really.
[53:00] Yeah, yeah. Usual suspects like he's
[53:03] wonderful in that he's very, very minimal role, but how do
[53:05] the keys and guys like what the fuck?
[53:06] He's absolutely fucking brilliant.
[53:08] He's got a fucking track. It's fucking great.
[53:10] Hear me in the back. Hello.
[53:12] Hello, it's. Absolutely brilliant in Fear
[53:16] Lothan. I think he's wonderful in that.
[53:18] Really, really great and for future collaborations.
[53:21] And I mean, I'm really excited like you might have seen when
[53:23] Wes Anderson film to be honest. I'm really excited to see when
[53:26] Paul Thomas Anderson film To be Honest again after her advice,
[53:30] but I'd love to see him back with the only of in June.
[53:32] Part 3 is like a really baddy role.
[53:34] All right, great. I think del Toro would really
[53:36] get his teeth into something like that, so I think that'd be
[53:38] great. Yeah, Great.
[53:40] I don't think he's been overlooked, to be honest.
[53:42] I think he's just a bit choosy. Yeah.
[53:44] It may not have that, like, permanent physical presence, but
[53:46] he'll never be out of mind because he's just too damn good.
[53:50] He is. Yeah.
[53:50] And I do agree with Catherine. He elevates anything that he's
[53:53] in. He's he's he's a standout in
[53:55] anything. Yeah, underrated performance.
[53:58] Like you, Matt, I'm not too sure if it's underrated, but I think
[54:01] he's the best performer in Sin City.
[54:03] Yeah, we talked about that in Double Feature, but one that I
[54:05] really like that came and went was the film Basquiat about the
[54:10] artist Jean Michel Basquiat. Oh yeah, yeah.
[54:13] Wow. OK, Yeah.
[54:15] That's a deep cut. Jeffrey Wright plays the lead,
[54:18] plays basket. Obviously Del Toro plays his
[54:20] best friend and it's a great performance and it's an
[54:23] outstanding supporting cast. If you've not seen it have just
[54:26] have a look at the cast, you'll be blown away.
[54:28] It's a hidden Gen. of the film as well.
[54:30] For a while now I'm going to check that out.
[54:32] It's great. And roles, you know, we all know
[54:35] he can play the Ruden menace. He loves that one.
[54:39] But I'd like to see him play a bit more for laughs.
[54:41] We know he can do it in Snatch, yes.
[54:44] So yeah, playing a bit more for laughs.
[54:47] A Soda Berg knockabout comedy caper, maybe with Del Toro in
[54:50] the lead. That's what I'm hoping for.
[54:52] I really like him in Soderbergh films.
[54:53] He was good in No Sudden Move a few years back.
[54:56] Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. He'd be good in like an Ocean's
[54:58] reboot with like. That's what I've got to be my
[55:00] investing. Yeah, in an ocean, that'd be.
[55:02] Fantastic. Yeah, OK, great.
[55:04] Thanks very much for the question, Catherine.
[55:07] Thank you. Appreciate it.
[55:07] Thank you, guys. Thank you for the three
[55:09] questions. For the effort you put into.
[55:10] It yeah, that was that was our. Effort as being just as good for
[55:13] you. Yeah, and with that we're at the
[55:15] end of our discussion on the cast.
[55:17] Not forgetting Daniel Kaluya, of course, but in blunt brawling
[55:20] and Del Toro, Sicario has got one of the best three-way leads
[55:23] of any film since the turn of the century.
[55:25] No, that was shadow of A. Doubt.
[55:34] All right, movies, We'll be right back.
[55:36] Thank you for supporting us by listening to the sponsors for
[55:38] this episode. Thank you for listening to our
[55:43] sponsors. And now it's back to the show.
[55:48] The middle. The second act of the film
[55:53] brings literal and metaphorical fireworks, and we're starting
[55:56] with the less than scrupulous interrogation tactics on
[55:58] Guillermo. Graver starts us off in his
[56:02] typical language style, Nuablo English.
[56:05] He's so smug when he says that he's got an old buddy on his
[56:08] way. And that old buddy obviously is
[56:10] Alejandro, who's outside of the water cooler, you know, just
[56:13] wetting his whistle. And go back with what we said
[56:16] about Alejandro in the previous scene.
[56:18] This dialogue between him and his whole buddy is very, very
[56:21] talent. The guy says, I'm sorry about
[56:23] what happened on your return. I can control only what I can.
[56:27] Now, if he's talking about the beheading of his wife and his
[56:29] child being dropped in acid and this is a very casual approach,
[56:34] then he's going to talk about his own family.
[56:36] And Alejandro's unmoved. Despite how much rage is
[56:39] bubbling under the surface. It's powerful restraint from del
[56:42] Toro and really plays well on repeat viewings.
[56:45] He's clearly a sensitive man and at his heart a nice guy, I
[56:49] think. But all that changes when he
[56:51] gets into that interrogation room and I love when he gets in
[56:55] there. Guillermo's reaction.
[56:56] Alejandro comes through the door and he even looks to Matt for
[57:00] solace, who he's been given to the all the way flowing place.
[57:06] I've never seen anybody threatened by a bottle of water
[57:08] before. This scene is just so effective
[57:10] because it's it's what you don't see who you just hear a couple
[57:14] of grunts, a bit of movement. What could he possibly be doing
[57:17] to him? Obviously when that video camera
[57:19] is switched off, we know we're morally all over the place.
[57:23] Let's go outside. And Kate knows what's going on
[57:26] here as well. Later, when Graver tells her
[57:28] that Guillermo told them about the tunnels, she says, oh
[57:31] really? He just gave you that
[57:32] information, did he? This scene hasn't shown us
[57:36] anything we haven't seen before in movies, but it really stands
[57:39] out because of the performances. And that terrifying water bottle
[57:43] that is just slapped on the floor.
[57:45] No, it's a great sequence it. Is a great sequence, but I do
[57:50] have a theory about this, that how he was going about and how
[57:52] people have been talking about it.
[57:54] And the more I've watched it, the more this kind of rings with
[57:56] me about how dark some of this is that you don't see.
[58:00] Now. I think this is a rape sequence
[58:04] in that that's what happened to him when he came back.
[58:07] He's not talking about his wife dying and his daughter died.
[58:09] And I think he was abused by these guys to keep him quiet and
[58:12] it was to dehumanize him. And he walks into the room.
[58:16] Just hear us out. So he walks into the room, he's
[58:18] crotches in this guy's face. It's very sexually demand, very
[58:21] much forceful on this guy. And if he wants to dehumanize
[58:25] him, what's the best way to do it?
[58:27] No, I don't think Alejandro sodomized him personally.
[58:30] I think he maybe uses a chair leg, uses something else.
[58:33] Something. Why would a delic I leave the
[58:35] room. We've just seen him wipe out
[58:36] four people in cold blood without thinking twice.
[58:39] He loves what they do. He's singing, bodies hanging
[58:40] from the bridge. He's seen it all before.
[58:42] He's turning off the video camera.
[58:44] Why do they need to turn that off?
[58:45] If he's walking past everybody with a water bottle, he puts the
[58:48] water bottle down and it's just a little bit of a decoy to show
[58:51] people are this is actually what I'm going to do.
[58:53] But what I might actually do is far worse than that.
[58:56] And that's why Matt's there. Give him a hand with it, what
[58:58] you're looking at me for. And you can tell he's Matt is
[59:00] such a bastard that he'll do anything to dehumanize these
[59:04] people. He'll do anything to make them
[59:05] feel bad. And the thing that got me was
[59:08] that we see that drain and the water isn't opened and the start
[59:12] on them and you hear the grunting, you hear them.
[59:14] You know this. It's it's rhythmic.
[59:16] It's already there. And being Vilniu, what he does
[59:20] is he cuts to that drain, and you know who else cuts to a
[59:22] circular window with water involved is Hitchcock and Money,
[59:27] and that's that famous rape sequence.
[59:29] And he cuts to the same circle and the water is not going down
[59:32] there. So we're showing that it's not
[59:33] water torture. We're showing that it's got
[59:35] nothing to do with the water. It's something completely
[59:37] different, it's something darker, it's something worse.
[59:40] Brilliant. Good argument, good theory.
[59:42] Very grim, very grim. And whatever happens to
[59:45] Guillermo, I'm sure is. Countless for the grim.
[59:49] Classic Westie. And then you get a scene after
[59:54] this and it's a very quick scene to be honest, but it doesn't
[59:56] need talking about. And it's when Kate goes on the
[59:58] roof of the facility. Because she's already so
[1:00:01] disoriented by everything, you know, she's out there.
[1:00:04] She's started smoking again. It's the only thing that calms
[1:00:06] it down now. So when that guy comes up to it,
[1:00:09] do you like fireworks? I mean, yes, doesn't everyone
[1:00:12] is, is this a pick up line? Am I getting like hit on here by
[1:00:16] a guy? But then like after everything
[1:00:18] she's been through and he says, do you want to see something
[1:00:20] cool? It's like yes definitely.
[1:00:22] Please something that's just cool.
[1:00:24] Would be great to see at this. Point Do you want to see me feed
[1:00:27] a mouse to my snake? Yes.
[1:00:32] You don't see No, the headless corpse hanging off a bitch not.
[1:00:34] Really. Not really.
[1:00:36] And the first thing you know, it's just going to be the
[1:00:38] amazing Vista that you can see from that vantage top.
[1:00:40] And you know, the clouds are obviously incredible, but no,
[1:00:42] it's this sporadic gunfight. This is what happens when you
[1:00:45] chop the head off a chicken. And so for the gunfight and
[1:00:48] explosions to be happened openly in such a small town just being
[1:00:51] so dorm how wide control this whole scenario is.
[1:00:54] Incredible visuals. So after that, we see Reggie
[1:00:57] turn up. He's offered them a ride.
[1:00:59] They're going to Tucson and he's going to have to drive for 100
[1:01:02] miles. It's going to take two hours.
[1:01:04] And we don't quite know why, but we need to find out where the
[1:01:07] tunnel is. We need to find out.
[1:01:08] People who have been through it need to find out what's going on
[1:01:11] so they can pinpoint the location, which after you know,
[1:01:14] many, many viewings, it becomes very, very obvious.
[1:01:17] But on your first view, when you think what we're doing here,
[1:01:19] what's the point? Is this another red Heron?
[1:01:21] Is this thrown K off again? Is this thrown Reggie off again?
[1:01:24] What are they actually doing here?
[1:01:25] Are they looking for somebody? Is somebody in here?
[1:01:27] But I think what film of does is he shows a real human touch
[1:01:31] here. These people aren't dangerous.
[1:01:34] These people are scared. They're not dirty, they're not
[1:01:36] violent. They're not like clutching the
[1:01:39] people. They're not making a, you know,
[1:01:40] a big scene that is trying to get away from this hell and go
[1:01:44] to something that's got a bit more of a promise to it.
[1:01:47] And it's just this real hot. It's a heart wrenching scene for
[1:01:49] me because you can just see it in all of the faces of just like
[1:01:53] and nearly got there and I've had to come back.
[1:01:55] And it's the humanity that's also played by Del Toro in this.
[1:01:58] He's like, let's see your hands. So you know, it's how hard the
[1:02:01] word, if you've got any tattoos, are you part of a cartel?
[1:02:04] Are you part of something else? No.
[1:02:06] And he's just got this real humility and this real calm and
[1:02:09] this real sense of patience and understanding with everybody.
[1:02:12] And I just find that really, really wonderful.
[1:02:14] And that's just from what we've seen previously from a torture
[1:02:17] sequence, however you interpret that torture sequence.
[1:02:20] And he's gone to this real sense of humility and humanity, which
[1:02:24] he does with Kate as well when he finds out what she's been
[1:02:27] through her neck, you know, And he's kind of just there.
[1:02:29] And he's constantly just, I'm OK, how are you?
[1:02:31] You know, he's got this real back and forth, but Kaluya here
[1:02:34] really stands out and she's like, I've asked all these
[1:02:37] questions that you can do any better.
[1:02:38] He's like, yeah, should go on the mat.
[1:02:40] And he's like, straight away, absolutely brilliant.
[1:02:44] Like you've come to about. It's like there's keeping us in
[1:02:45] the dark, then there's the way you're treating us.
[1:02:47] But then when Brolin comes over and he's got that whole, like,
[1:02:49] bravado, oh, you look so. Yeah.
[1:02:52] And he's a chew in the gums around.
[1:02:53] What do you want to know? But he's always looking the hell
[1:02:56] as Alejandro. And he's like, how much can I
[1:02:58] say? How far can I go with this?
[1:03:00] And you can tell he's kind of just given him the eye just
[1:03:02] going. Yeah.
[1:03:02] Tell him about the tunnel. Yeah, that's fine.
[1:03:04] Yeah. Just go that far.
[1:03:05] Yeah. And he's our OK.
[1:03:06] Is that enough? Is that will that do for you?
[1:03:08] You know, it's brilliant. And then you just get that
[1:03:10] whole, you know, right. OK.
[1:03:11] We're great. Yeah, That's fine.
[1:03:13] Yeah, that's that's OK. But don't keep us in the dark.
[1:03:15] And then you get that he's scared at the dark.
[1:03:17] Just that line, just that delivering the walkway.
[1:03:20] Just get yourself back. We'll get their own ride.
[1:03:22] It's fine. We don't actually need you.
[1:03:23] You're just here as a necessity. You're just a tool.
[1:03:26] You're just you're. A pawn in the game.
[1:03:28] Yeah, you're just the chalk on the hand so I can lift the
[1:03:30] weights up. It's also got an amazing payoff
[1:03:33] line to end the scene as well. When Reggie and Kate are walking
[1:03:36] away, Reggie says Who the fuck is Guillermo?
[1:03:44] I'd say that in typical Phil Nerve fashion, the film is short
[1:03:47] on laughs, but that is a really it's a really good line.
[1:03:51] Yeah, that's a really good one, yeah.
[1:03:53] So Kate and Reggie have been given a bit more information,
[1:03:55] but Reggie is probably more in the dark than Kate at this
[1:03:58] point, Yeah. Unfortunately.
[1:04:02] The next day sees Matt shake and more trees with Kate not fully
[1:04:06] up to speed with his methods, and we're starting at Kate's
[1:04:09] place. Yeah.
[1:04:11] I mean, I just want to pick up from West East Point really
[1:04:13] about Kaluya, because his performance really needs to be
[1:04:16] talked about. Definitely.
[1:04:18] I mean, probably the one that really put him on the Hollywood
[1:04:20] map, I think. Yeah, he's probably just a lot
[1:04:22] of British TV before this. It was, yeah.
[1:04:25] He's also good and I think he and Blunt have such an implicit
[1:04:28] bond in this film. Totally get each other's backs.
[1:04:31] The fact that she will walk away if he walks away, Despite that,
[1:04:34] Matt doesn't care. You know, I didn't ask you here,
[1:04:37] but backs them all the way. I love the fact there's no force
[1:04:40] romantic subplot between the two of them or and he's so
[1:04:44] dependable. He's always there for whether
[1:04:46] it's the meeting at the beginning or when he drives it
[1:04:48] to the base where he's not allowed in.
[1:04:50] But he doesn't kick off. He doesn't make a big stink.
[1:04:52] He takes his ego out the situation right.
[1:04:54] I've dropped it off. I'll drive back.
[1:04:55] And then you get this scene, that case space, which you know,
[1:04:58] we've said not a lot of laughs, see, but it is probably one of
[1:05:01] the best bits of light relief in the film.
[1:05:03] I mean, I see a light relief. Kids looked at loads of pictures
[1:05:06] of dead bodies here but. At least we're not seeing them.
[1:05:10] At least it's a picture of it. Yeah, yeah.
[1:05:12] And her reactions. But it's light relief because
[1:05:15] Reggie knows how to take a mind off it.
[1:05:17] You know, we've referenced the the line a couple of Times Now,
[1:05:20] but it's the fact that she's often dressed and walking
[1:05:22] around. And when he says got to get you
[1:05:23] a new royal woman. Yeah.
[1:05:25] Because he, someone makes it not sleazy.
[1:05:27] That could be such a sleazy line because there's this friendship
[1:05:31] between them. It's not.
[1:05:32] And for the first time in the film, she genuinely laughs at
[1:05:34] something. Like the list of things I need.
[1:05:37] And, you know, I'm just saying some nice, lazy something.
[1:05:39] It's just such a little break for the character that she
[1:05:41] needs. And it's just this very quick
[1:05:43] but very effective insight into Kate's life, into their
[1:05:46] partnership. As she says, it's been a long
[1:05:49] time since anyone but Reggie saw her in a bra, which I think
[1:05:52] speaks volumes about those two. It's heartbreaking for her as
[1:05:55] well, and it's like this, this real brother and sister kind of
[1:05:58] relationship. Isn't that's what it's like?
[1:06:00] It is, It's, it is, brother. Just because there's a line and
[1:06:03] you know Reggie's not going to go anywhere near that line.
[1:06:06] With her, she's not interested whatsoever.
[1:06:08] Not. Interested whatsoever it's you
[1:06:10] know, it's the type of conversation you can only have
[1:06:12] in this job with someone you completely trust in the respects
[1:06:15] boundaries. You know she knows he won't take
[1:06:17] advantage of how lonely she isn't a personal life.
[1:06:19] So it's a really important thing.
[1:06:21] It's like when he says, do you want us to stay?
[1:06:23] You know, after, after the whole incident, She's like, no, it's
[1:06:25] OK. But you know for a fact if he
[1:06:26] stayed, it wouldn't be anything to do with that.
[1:06:28] Yeah, no, yeah, it's a real great character.
[1:06:31] Scene between the two of them. Yeah, yeah.
[1:06:33] So from there. But we need to know what's going
[1:06:35] on. I think Reggie's got a little
[1:06:36] bit more fire in his belly, and he needs to kind of really get
[1:06:39] the grips of this. He's getting a bit pissed off,
[1:06:41] isn't he? He's like, come on, What?
[1:06:42] What is going on? And we get to go to the motel
[1:06:45] room where the Mexicans are telling, you know, the guys
[1:06:48] exactly what they need to know, exactly where they need to be,
[1:06:51] exactly where the tunnel is. But it's just so funny.
[1:06:54] What's the password, moron? You know, that's just so funny.
[1:06:58] And then we're already in and it's been a little bit bad.
[1:07:00] But then, you know, Matt just kind of pushes her away and
[1:07:02] says, no, you can't go any further than this.
[1:07:04] Yeah, it's about as far as you can go.
[1:07:06] She turns around and as all of this is getting spilled, getting
[1:07:09] all this exposition, she turns to Reggie.
[1:07:11] She's like, are you getting this?
[1:07:12] He said, yeah, yeah. And, you know, he's getting, I
[1:07:13] love that, you know, he's getting all of it and say, yeah,
[1:07:15] I'm getting it. I'm paying attention because
[1:07:17] this matters. And it's the Mexican guys
[1:07:19] reaction. So this is our spot.
[1:07:21] Boo. Yeah, they're.
[1:07:23] Like no chance man. It's like this is ridiculous,
[1:07:27] it's going to be dangerous. We know it's going to be
[1:07:29] dangerous but know it's going to be powerful.
[1:07:30] We know like he's telling the truth.
[1:07:32] It's going to be a great day, you know it's going to be a good
[1:07:34] day that's excited about it and he's up for it and Alejandro's
[1:07:38] up for it. I think at that point we'll have
[1:07:40] this real sense of relief and humour.
[1:07:43] But then it shrouded in one of the darkest moments of the whole
[1:07:46] film, was like, this is where we need to go and it's going to be
[1:07:48] really, really dangerous. And we found it and they're
[1:07:51] excited about it. And two characters who were
[1:07:53] following don't have any idea how dangerous it's going to be.
[1:07:57] And all the Mexicans are going don't go there.
[1:07:59] No way. That's ridiculous.
[1:08:02] And can you point it out on the map?
[1:08:03] Right. We know where we're going, we
[1:08:04] know where it needs to be. We know it's going to be
[1:08:06] dangerous. Are we going to go?
[1:08:07] Well, I have to. Yeah, great little exposition
[1:08:10] scene at the moment. I like follows this.
[1:08:13] It's the bank. Matt says that he's going to
[1:08:15] fuck with Manuel Diaz's wallet and he asked Kate to enlist his
[1:08:19] her pals in Phoenix SWAT. Great.
[1:08:22] And this goes back to what he said to Kate earlier.
[1:08:24] He's shaking the tree again to make chaos.
[1:08:27] This is the noise that will send Diaz back over to Mexico for a
[1:08:29] dressing down from his boss. It's dirty tactics, but it's
[1:08:33] effective. Oh yeah, and Kate isn't quite up
[1:08:37] to speed with what's going on here, not really.
[1:08:39] Even though her intentions are very good and her training is
[1:08:42] kicked in, she thinks it's something they can actually
[1:08:44] build a case on. She cannot see the bigger
[1:08:46] picture and the point of Matt's actions.
[1:08:49] If they get to Diaz's boss, then Diaz doesn't exist.
[1:08:52] She doesn't understand that you have to cut it off at source
[1:08:55] because she thinks, you know, build a case and you know, we've
[1:08:57] got a genuine case, we can put them behind bars.
[1:09:00] God knows how many times that's been tried, yeah.
[1:09:02] Exactly. And somebody will just replace
[1:09:04] the ass. Yeah, it reinforces her
[1:09:06] idealistic nature, her naivety and her willingness to do what's
[1:09:09] right. And what that gets her is in
[1:09:12] deep shit with the ass. Because now she's on camera in
[1:09:15] the bank, in the black and white security, and Ted will be sent
[1:09:18] in to take advantage later. Horrific stuff.
[1:09:21] Don't go in the bank. There she is going in the bank.
[1:09:23] Don't go in the bank. Don't go in the bank.
[1:09:25] And he, she will not listen to him.
[1:09:27] But that's Matt, isn't it? He doesn't stop her from going
[1:09:29] and he's thinking how can I take advantage of this moment?
[1:09:31] Yes. What will I get from this?
[1:09:32] Yeah, I've told you. I told you not to go in.
[1:09:35] So things are becoming a bit more clear.
[1:09:37] And unbeknownst to Kate, she's used herself as bait.
[1:09:40] The. Crew.
[1:09:48] The crew on Sicario is a misk of frequent Ville nerve
[1:09:50] collaborators and first time screenwriter Taylor Sheridan.
[1:09:53] And that's where we're starting. Sheridan had been in acting
[1:09:57] since the 90s, most notably in Sons of Anarchy on TV.
[1:10:01] Yeah, so his first screenplay kind of came out of the blue.
[1:10:04] Westie, what do you think of the right non Sicario?
[1:10:07] I mean, it doesn't feel like it's come out of the blue.
[1:10:09] It doesn't. And I think from the screenplay,
[1:10:12] it does seem like it's very generic from the start of like,
[1:10:16] you get our handle back story, you get a lot of dialogue, you
[1:10:18] get a lot of explanation, but you don't get a lot of
[1:10:20] exposition. And I think what Taylor Sheridan
[1:10:22] has done with this script is that I think because of his TV
[1:10:25] background, he was kind of allergic to exposition, which is
[1:10:27] what he said in interviews, that you wanted to do something from
[1:10:30] a different angle. And that's what I would approach
[1:10:32] this with. I think it is the story we've
[1:10:34] seen a million times. Yes, it is a revenge story.
[1:10:38] It is John Wick. But from Kate's point of view,
[1:10:40] yeah, I think there's some really good dialogue.
[1:10:42] I think it is very well researched.
[1:10:44] Look, if you finish an acting career, right, which isn't
[1:10:47] massively successful and in your 40s and you write a screenplay
[1:10:50] and it's picked up by Denny's veneer, yeah, you were like,
[1:10:53] well, that's all right, isn't it?
[1:10:54] Yeah, that's pretty good. Jackpot.
[1:10:56] I mean, that that's that's not too bad because there's a lot in
[1:10:59] this screenplay that really, really works.
[1:11:01] And it's taken Dennis filling you to come and go.
[1:11:03] I'm leaving this out, by the way.
[1:11:04] And it makes it more interesting.
[1:11:06] But being his first screenplay, he didn't know that.
[1:11:09] He wouldn't know that. And he's learned so many lessons
[1:11:11] since writing this. If you look at how much he
[1:11:13] leaves out of Yellowstone, how much he leaves out of them
[1:11:15] stories, and how much you have to fill in yourself, the whole
[1:11:18] process has made him a better writer.
[1:11:20] But from the offset, it's a very, very strong script that I
[1:11:22] think could have been made by anybody, but it was made by a
[1:11:25] different director, would have been a very, very different
[1:11:27] approach and a very, very different story.
[1:11:29] Very lucky, very lucky with the he's the director that he's
[1:11:33] landed on, but the source material is as good as anything
[1:11:36] else you would have seen in the last, what, 30 years.
[1:11:38] I think it's really, really strong.
[1:11:39] Yeah, it is strong. Yeah.
[1:11:41] And he's, he struck gold with the director as well.
[1:11:43] Yeah, a great marriage. What do you think of the writing
[1:11:45] matter? I think I'd be interested to
[1:11:46] know what the reaction to this film in Mexico itself was
[1:11:51] because there's a lot of tropes at play here that I think like
[1:11:53] if I was Mexican I think I'd be sick of seeing them, like the
[1:11:56] smarter than poverty and violent drug cartels.
[1:12:01] I said at the top that I wasn't that fussed on this film when it
[1:12:04] first came out, but I've done the 180 on it and I think the
[1:12:07] writing is the main part of the film that I still can't quite
[1:12:09] change my opinion on. And it's it's similar path to
[1:12:12] SU-80. It's the fact that it is very
[1:12:14] reliant on tropes and ultimately it doesn't really take me on a
[1:12:17] journey I haven't been on before.
[1:12:19] So the CIA are up to some shady stuff in other countries.
[1:12:23] I've seen that the drug smuggling business is morally
[1:12:26] complex and ambiguous. Yes, I've seen that people you
[1:12:30] think you can trust will pull a gun on you at a moment to
[1:12:32] notice. I've seen that, and that's the
[1:12:34] issue for me. It's certainly not badly
[1:12:36] written, mean. The dialogue absolutely sings.
[1:12:39] It's got a very strong arc to it, a very strong narrative
[1:12:41] backbone. It's just in terms of plot,
[1:12:43] narrative, there's no real like emotional journey for me to
[1:12:47] really kind of hang on to here. But that's a good point, yeah.
[1:12:51] But but the positive way I want to spin it though, is that
[1:12:54] because I've done a 180 once, I kind of really sat and thought
[1:12:56] about this film, thought, yeah, it's the right.
[1:12:58] Not just that's down a bit for me.
[1:13:00] That's when I was really able to appreciate everything else in
[1:13:04] this film a lot more. Those performances are doing a
[1:13:07] lot of fill in the blanks of the right, and that's how they're so
[1:13:09] good. Deakins makes this film look
[1:13:11] 1000 times more unique than the right and makes it seem feel
[1:13:15] nerve elevates this way above what it could have been, which
[1:13:18] could have been just something dumped on Netflix that no one
[1:13:22] would ever go back to. Some people might watch it, but
[1:13:24] most people wouldn't hear it. I.
[1:13:25] Think five years later if it was made in 2020 would just be
[1:13:28] dumped on Netflix. Exactly.
[1:13:30] That's absolutely a series, which is what really good at
[1:13:33] doing, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
[1:13:34] I mean, that might be strength. So for me, that's where the
[1:13:37] level of the rightness, it's fine up to a point, but everyone
[1:13:40] else involved gets to that point and then ensures that their work
[1:13:44] is elevated above it. Yeah, I take your points for
[1:13:48] certain. I think what sets it apart is
[1:13:51] probably what you were saying, Wesley, a different spin on a
[1:13:53] conventional story. Yes, we've it's very familiar
[1:13:57] Matt and there's nothing too much new from like a narrative
[1:14:00] point of view, but it is taken a view from like a 90° angle.
[1:14:06] Kid is the blue eyed law enforcer who wants to do the job
[1:14:09] well and write Reggie's on her side to the rest of the
[1:14:13] characters are drawn completely differently.
[1:14:15] So I really like the ambiguity in the characters.
[1:14:18] Nothing new, but I'd like the way that it's written here.
[1:14:22] I don't know, like the other characters, is it because
[1:14:24] they're older with more experience?
[1:14:25] They've been battle hardened by the job and have worked out the
[1:14:28] only way to survive in this world.
[1:14:30] Arcade and Reggie too wet behind the ears to understand this.
[1:14:33] It certainly takes them a good long while to get up to speed.
[1:14:37] And then Alejandro and Matt are morally ambiguous.
[1:14:40] They're on the perceived right side and their main objective
[1:14:43] seems to be a +1. But to be able to achieve this
[1:14:47] objective, they have to do terrible things like kidnap,
[1:14:49] torture and murder. So how can those three things
[1:14:52] equate to the good guys? But with all the information
[1:14:55] presented in the film, I think we'd all argue that we are on
[1:14:59] their side. Oh yeah, yeah.
[1:15:01] And by the end, Kate is so ground down and backed into a
[1:15:04] corner by this apparent law enforcement system that she
[1:15:07] signed something that she doesn't believe in, making her
[1:15:09] complicit in The Dirty dealings. She's now on the other side of
[1:15:12] the fence and changed forever. So I think the right and asks
[1:15:15] you questions about your moral fibre.
[1:15:17] What would you do? Can anybody be as idealistic as
[1:15:20] Kate and survive in this world? Everyone's got Shades of Grey
[1:15:23] and the right and really brings that out for me.
[1:15:26] Yeah, exactly. It does question your morals.
[1:15:27] And it does say at the end, you know, you can't survive here.
[1:15:30] This is a world of wolves, and you're not wolves.
[1:15:32] And you're not Wolf, Exactly. Yeah.
[1:15:33] Which again, good dialogue. That's a really good line.
[1:15:36] It could have been. It could have been a little
[1:15:37] cheesy. Yeah, it could have been, but.
[1:15:39] Because it's coming from del Toro.
[1:15:42] Yeah. So as we.
[1:15:43] Said Sheridan was working on Sons of Anarchy when he started
[1:15:46] to get the itch to write a screenplay.
[1:15:48] He started to get interested in character development and
[1:15:50] motivations and how that had an impact on the whole narrative.
[1:15:53] Yeah, he took a good to move of Quitney's TV gig and writing
[1:15:56] this screenplay. He heavily researched the
[1:15:58] controversial subject matter, starting off reading online
[1:16:01] articles and blogs. He later travelled down to
[1:16:03] Mexico to conduct interviews. However, he does remain tight
[1:16:06] lipped about some of his research.
[1:16:07] Which I'm not fucking surprised. No, it's going.
[1:16:10] To be hanging naked in Warriors, Yeah, it knows it's subject
[1:16:14] matter. I love the confidence of the
[1:16:16] writing there. Oh, massively.
[1:16:17] Yeah. Even the the dialogue between
[1:16:19] the Delta Force is just like, you know, my turn is this, this
[1:16:21] gun here, there's this. And so it totally makes sense.
[1:16:24] Yeah, it does. And he also said there's a
[1:16:26] certain amount of how I did some research that I'm not sharing
[1:16:29] with anyone. People who are in Mexico, who I
[1:16:31] spoke with for clear reasons, I'm just leaving all that out.
[1:16:35] Of course, I think protecting himself and others as well,
[1:16:38] Yeah, but. He didn't have an agent.
[1:16:40] Once it was written, he sent it to an attorney who had
[1:16:42] negotiated a few deals from in the past.
[1:16:44] He read it and gave it to some agents that he knew and it grew
[1:16:47] from there. Massive.
[1:16:48] Yeah, I know, oldie move. And initially nobody wanted to
[1:16:52] touch it because of its subject and he said it was toxic to
[1:16:55] finances. Sheridan also came under
[1:16:57] pressure to change the character of care to a man because a lot
[1:17:00] of meetings he took insisted on that change.
[1:17:02] But he was adamant that the character should be female based
[1:17:04] on what we said earlier, that she is based on an actual
[1:17:07] person. Yeah, that's crazy that.
[1:17:09] That changes the game. That changes the whole.
[1:17:12] Thing. For the worse.
[1:17:14] It finally landed on the desk of Basil Iwanik, who sent it to
[1:17:17] producer Molly Smith, who sent it to Denive Nerf, who loved it.
[1:17:21] And that was that. And by the time Sicario went
[1:17:25] into production, Sheridan had already sold another half a
[1:17:27] dozen scripts banging them out. For Sheridan, Sicario is the
[1:17:32] first part of his American Frontier thematic trilogy.
[1:17:35] The second is, as we've talked about, Hella high Water.
[1:17:37] And the third is Wind River, which he also dreaded.
[1:17:40] Yeah, all great films. Yeah, all great films.
[1:17:43] And in the last 10 years, he's probably been the most prolific
[1:17:46] creator in movies and TV. His writing credits include
[1:17:49] Without Remorse, the Sicario sequel, as well as those two
[1:17:52] that you've just mentioned. Westie on TV was the creator,
[1:17:55] director, writer of Yellowstone and its spin offs, Tulsa King,
[1:17:58] Landman, Mira, Kingstown, among others.
[1:18:01] Prolific doesn't come into it. Oh, really great as well.
[1:18:04] Yeah, but for his writing debut, he does solid work, adding a new
[1:18:08] spin to very familiar ground. Definitely, yeah.
[1:18:14] Next is Icelandic music maestro Johann Johansson, the composer
[1:18:17] so nice they named him twice. This was his.
[1:18:21] Second of three collaborations with Villeneuve, following
[1:18:24] Prisoners and proceeding Blade Runner 2049.
[1:18:27] However, his work wasn't used for that film.
[1:18:29] No. But it was on Sicario to
[1:18:31] devastate an effect. That opening with that title
[1:18:35] card and the explanation of the word Sicario.
[1:18:38] You mentioned the top Westie. The score comes in quietly and
[1:18:42] then thunders to a pulsing crescendo, immediately putting
[1:18:47] you on edge. And I don't think it lets up for
[1:18:49] the next two hours. The tenseness that I feel inside
[1:18:52] my chest doesn't leave until the credits roll.
[1:18:55] Yeah, I think it's a troubling score.
[1:18:57] As in it gives such a huge sense of danger, like something bad is
[1:19:01] permanently happening in this world that we're living in for
[1:19:05] these two hours. Constant, isn't it?
[1:19:07] It will not let up. It plays over those incredible
[1:19:10] Deacon frames and adds so much powerful menace to everything.
[1:19:14] And, you know, it's not really a score, is it?
[1:19:17] It's it's more like it's woven into the tapestry of that.
[1:19:19] It's like an an atmosphere, like it's all part of the sound
[1:19:23] design. There's nothing in the way of a
[1:19:26] narrative or character theme, nor jaunty little music cues
[1:19:29] here and there. Obviously not.
[1:19:31] It just gives the film an unholy, nasty edge and just a
[1:19:36] sense of relief when it finishes is palpable.
[1:19:39] But it's it's so effective. I mean, I completely agree.
[1:19:42] I'd hesitate to even call it a score because it's more.
[1:19:46] Sound, isn't it? It is.
[1:19:47] It's more subliminal than that. And like you 2, I will just
[1:19:50] mention the way it starts with that production logo and the
[1:19:53] repetitive drum sounds like a heartbeat.
[1:19:55] And it is the lifeblood of the film in a lot of ways.
[1:19:58] And no, not the type of score that's been written with the
[1:20:01] idea of eworms in mind. You're not humming this stuff
[1:20:04] afterwards, but I think that's the point.
[1:20:06] It it lies at a level in the mix in the film where it's about
[1:20:09] adding to the tension of the scene.
[1:20:11] You don't listen to the music here, you experience it.
[1:20:15] But one thing about Sicario is people come out of it really
[1:20:18] talking about the score, and when it's so eternal as it is, I
[1:20:22] think that's quite remarkable how it comes across.
[1:20:25] Yeah. Very much because there isn't
[1:20:27] anything to hang on to like from like any E worms or anything
[1:20:31] like that. All I've got is just a sound of
[1:20:33] dread in me. E is getting back to what it
[1:20:35] sounds like. Yeah.
[1:20:37] Busty, your thoughts on the score?
[1:20:39] Yeah, I mean, we've talked about Johansson before, me might have.
[1:20:42] We talked about with John when we did the Arrival episode and
[1:20:46] we already explained then how subconscious that score felt,
[1:20:50] how he invented the language and intertwined that language with
[1:20:54] something that was just completely new.
[1:20:56] And I think he does the same here, even though he's got
[1:20:58] something that can but would be quite generic that you would
[1:21:01] expect to have. It's Mexico.
[1:21:03] What do you think the soundtrack should be?
[1:21:05] OK, right? It should be that, you know,
[1:21:07] like what Robert Rodriguez does with Dustal Dawn.
[1:21:10] Yeah. Yeah, yeah, the Lost Law boss is
[1:21:12] not here. No, exactly.
[1:21:15] I mean, there's, there's none of that.
[1:21:16] Like, you know, we'll need to reinforce anything.
[1:21:19] It's not reinforcing the visual, it's reinforcing the emotion.
[1:21:22] Like you've both said, it's reinforcing, but it's really
[1:21:24] subliminal the way it's done. It's in your subconscious, like
[1:21:27] it's just behind your eyes. It's really reinforcing things
[1:21:31] and you don't hear it. There's no, there's no real
[1:21:33] theme. He never has.
[1:21:34] He never had written a theme, sorry.
[1:21:36] And I don't think he that was his way of approaching work.
[1:21:39] I think his way of approaching work was very textual, was very
[1:21:43] thoughtful, was very emotional, and in doing that was very
[1:21:47] understated, but at the same time very powerful.
[1:21:51] If you listen to this away from the film, it's terrifying.
[1:21:56] You can, if you listen to this, I listen to this driving back
[1:21:58] from work today and I thought everyone was out to get us like
[1:22:01] seriously. And I'll go through the time
[1:22:04] tunnel, which feels like, you know, the Mexican border
[1:22:06] sometimes because you're backed up in traffic, you have to go
[1:22:08] through the tunnel. And it was just this dumb, dumb.
[1:22:10] I was like, should I be listening to this?
[1:22:11] Because I'm looking over my shoulder and I'm just thinking
[1:22:13] like, Jesus Christ, what's going on?
[1:22:15] But it just, it just builds and it just bubbles in the back of
[1:22:18] your head. But the score for Sicario is
[1:22:20] probably one of the best in the way that it's intertwined.
[1:22:24] It reminds us of very much of, you know, like we've said,
[1:22:27] horror films. It reminds very much of
[1:22:29] Nightmare on Elm Street. It reminds me very much of
[1:22:31] Hellraiser. It reminds me very much of just
[1:22:33] setting that tone and that unease.
[1:22:35] He did it with such an ease. It seems that it was just just
[1:22:39] so easy for him just to plug into the visual and make it so
[1:22:43] much darker than it seems. I mean, we open in Arizona, but
[1:22:46] it feels like you're in hell. It does.
[1:22:49] Yeah, it's incredible. It's just incredible.
[1:22:50] It is. And feeling.
[1:22:52] I've told Johansen that he wanted the score to feel like a
[1:22:55] threat coming from under your feet, deep under the surface of
[1:22:58] the scorched earth of the Chihuahua desert.
[1:23:01] And he actually used the Jaws score as an example and played
[1:23:04] that as temp music when editing the film.
[1:23:06] Check and see where can you know for that.
[1:23:08] Definitely, yeah. Seeing our work.
[1:23:09] Just just thinking like the Arizona landscape, and then as
[1:23:12] soon as the guys walk in, it's like, yeah, totally, yeah, OK,
[1:23:16] I've got it. So to get the desired effect,
[1:23:18] Johansson use a 65 piece orchestra, all on the low end of
[1:23:22] the musical register, all in the bass.
[1:23:24] And Johansson said it's almost the sound of the drug tunnels
[1:23:27] are featured in the story. You can hear them, you can feel
[1:23:31] them. It's the resonation, it's the
[1:23:33] reverb, it's everything that's brought into the sound design.
[1:23:35] It just totally works. It reinforces the visuals.
[1:23:38] Yeah, massively. Johansen said that his score is
[1:23:41] like the throbbing heart of a beast charging at you.
[1:23:44] He and Villeneuve agreed that the music needed to be
[1:23:46] relentless and evoke a sense of insistent violence.
[1:23:50] Which means. Charge Are you in slow motion
[1:23:52] and you can hear his heartbeat and you know it's going to tear
[1:23:54] your face off and there's nothing you can do about it?
[1:23:57] That's terrifying. Sadly, Johansson died well
[1:24:01] before his years in 2018, but with his Oscar nominated score
[1:24:05] for Sicario and his other works, he's left behind an incredible
[1:24:08] legacy. Finally, the cinematographer
[1:24:13] we've probably talked about the most on the podcast, Yours and
[1:24:17] everybody's. Roger Deegan's probably the
[1:24:19] greatest living cinematographer who picked up the obligatory
[1:24:22] Best Cinematography Oscar nomination for his efforts here.
[1:24:26] Yeah. Villeneuve said he has the
[1:24:28] pressure of being Roger Deakins on every shot, which I thought
[1:24:31] was a fantastic quote. Yeah.
[1:24:34] Yeah, nails up. So how does he manage that?
[1:24:37] Matt, your thoughts on Deakins work here the.
[1:24:39] Thing for me is I don't think this would seem particularly
[1:24:43] visually interesting on the page.
[1:24:46] If anything likes it, maybe bit cliche.
[1:24:47] We've seen plenty of films in Mexico, plenty of shootouts,
[1:24:50] plenty of CIA rates on houses. But what Deakins does is make it
[1:24:55] seem like we've not seen any of this before.
[1:24:57] Really interesting when he shoots whites for characters
[1:25:00] having conversations. Such an unusual choice, like
[1:25:03] when Kate and Matt do it, when they get across the board and
[1:25:05] she's kicking off at him. The shooting of the landscape,
[1:25:08] the shooting of the natural light caught in this film, in
[1:25:10] this darkness. The shot that will always,
[1:25:13] forever live in my mind comes towards the end when we get into
[1:25:16] what's the total thing, which we'll talk about.
[1:25:17] But the soldiers are walking down an incline, but it looks
[1:25:20] like they've been swallowed up into the earth because it's in
[1:25:23] silhouette. Like I said, in terms of the
[1:25:26] writing, there's nothing really special in there for me, but
[1:25:30] everything around it is special and so.
[1:25:32] And that's never more true than what Deakins brings here.
[1:25:35] Yeah, incredible work, Westie. I mean, obviously you're a fan.
[1:25:39] Thoughts on Deakins here? I mean, look, this this work
[1:25:53] that he's done and it's incredible and this work is
[1:25:55] incredible and it's absolutely fantastic.
[1:25:57] And we can say that there was this shot here and he did this
[1:26:00] shot and he did this out and then you've done this.
[1:26:02] It's this isn't true collaboration between two
[1:26:05] visionary artists. And they worked so well together
[1:26:09] on prisoners. And every time we listen to
[1:26:11] Deacons, if you listen to his podcast, which I would highly
[1:26:13] recommend. And what I get from these
[1:26:15] visuals is just so heartwarming because it's two people who
[1:26:18] really want to impress each other, and it's two people are
[1:26:21] working so close together. But it's also every single
[1:26:24] member of Deacon's team. It's his focus puller, it's his
[1:26:27] gaffer, it's everyone who he's worked with all through his
[1:26:30] career making this work so well. You know, Alejandro putting the
[1:26:34] gun behind Kate's head and there's a focus pull on that,
[1:26:36] which is Oscar wordy. It's so clean, it's so crisp.
[1:26:41] It's just bang, he's in, bang, he's out.
[1:26:43] And we know where we are. And everyone always talks about
[1:26:46] Matt's just mentioned it there. You know, that shot, that
[1:26:48] silhouetted shot of them disappear.
[1:26:49] It's not difficult to shoot a silhouette like that when you
[1:26:52] have a sunset like that. It's not difficult because you
[1:26:55] know your exposure and you know that you're going to just knock
[1:26:58] it down a couple of stops. You know you're going to have
[1:27:00] shadows in front of you. What is difficult is the pace of
[1:27:04] moving the camera, of blocking the scene, of having people move
[1:27:07] and move the camera, making sure you understand their motivations
[1:27:10] as they're moving through the scene.
[1:27:12] And that's what people don't give Deacons enough credit for,
[1:27:15] is his motivation in character development.
[1:27:18] Deacons always used 1 camera on every film, refused to use more
[1:27:22] than one camera. So if you think of that shootout
[1:27:24] sequence at the border, that's one camera.
[1:27:27] So we'll figure out where it's going to be and what it's going
[1:27:28] to do. Watch it again.
[1:27:30] It's so well thought out, it's so well played.
[1:27:32] It's so technically perfect. The little moments as well that
[1:27:36] really play out on top of them. Massive technical moments.
[1:27:38] When Reggie finds out the Ted's an asshole and he's working for
[1:27:42] the cartel and he's fucking really upset.
[1:27:45] Look at the lighting on that. Kaluya is just behind his back
[1:27:48] and there's just this light next one and he's just half lit and
[1:27:52] it's fucking beautiful as a shot.
[1:27:54] It's. Beautiful.
[1:27:56] And it doesn't need to be. But before that, you've got this
[1:27:58] wide of the sirens, you've got everything else, and it's just
[1:28:01] this darkness. And you push into the darkness
[1:28:03] and he is this glimmer of hope for Kate.
[1:28:05] He's this slice of light in all of the darkness.
[1:28:08] And he can't bring himself to be any more like because he doesn't
[1:28:11] know what's going on Now that that one shot there, that one
[1:28:15] thing, I'm going to light it like this.
[1:28:17] What? Because it looks cool?
[1:28:18] No, because that guy's suffering and he can't bring any more
[1:28:21] light to kids life. And he can't be any more present
[1:28:24] than my life. And he is a shadow of who he
[1:28:26] used to be and go on for hours and hours and hours about
[1:28:29] everything that Deacon shoots. But it's just that what he puts
[1:28:32] into it from an emotional point of view, from a character point
[1:28:35] of view, I don't think is celebrated enough.
[1:28:38] Fantastic could easily go unnoticed.
[1:28:41] Without a shadow of doubt, yeah. But I mentioned about the visual
[1:28:44] language that film of communicates with this film, and
[1:28:47] he wouldn't be able to connect so strongly if it weren't for
[1:28:50] the Grand Master, Sir Rog. Of course, the complexities of
[1:28:54] those overhead shots, the complexities of the terrain,
[1:28:57] they all represent the complexities of this whole
[1:28:59] operation. The term that gets bandied
[1:29:01] about, it's quite a cliche, every frame of painting.
[1:29:04] But I think here Deacon should try and trademark the term every
[1:29:08] frame an ordinance survey map. Because.
[1:29:13] There's probably a bit more of a mouthful than the first one.
[1:29:18] And less flattering as well. But all these incredible
[1:29:24] overhead shots are so detailed and they've all got an identity.
[1:29:29] Despite containing very little other than just the desert and
[1:29:33] an odd smattering of green. They all look the same, but
[1:29:36] they've all got an identity, and this palette has been
[1:29:39] sandblasted and it's breathtakingly bleak, the kind
[1:29:42] of place where only wolves thrive.
[1:29:45] The visuals reinforce the narrative spectacularly.
[1:29:48] And the majority of the sets, the majority of the costumes,
[1:29:51] they're all like sandy beige, as if the Mexican desert has made
[1:29:55] its way over the border and infiltrated the very people who
[1:29:58] are fighting against it, blurring the lines between right
[1:30:00] and wrong once again. I mean, it's just stunning work
[1:30:04] from Roger Deakins. Unbelievable.
[1:30:06] Diggins took particular inspiration from the photography
[1:30:09] of Alex Webb, whose Crossings book depicted scenes on the
[1:30:12] Mexico US border, and he also used his background as a
[1:30:16] documentarian in war zones as a source of inspiration, he said.
[1:30:19] I think being in those war zones helped me give the shots Are
[1:30:22] grounded in reality, you can see that.
[1:30:25] Then you've said that using the RE Alexa brings a sensibility of
[1:30:28] 35 mil film doesn't have. But with Roger he approached
[1:30:31] digital like 35mm. It means everything is done in
[1:30:34] camera and on set. Colour timing for Roger is a
[1:30:37] very small process. It's something more crude in
[1:30:39] some ways and that everything's pretty much finished, as you
[1:30:42] say, on the daily. Yeah, everything's done in
[1:30:44] camera. Incredible.
[1:30:44] That's incredible. Yeah.
[1:30:47] We've also said, and how about this for 1/4?
[1:30:51] At the end of the day, it's not about the camera, it's who's
[1:30:53] behind the camera. And there's Roger Deakins, who
[1:30:56] could shoot with the shoe and it would look great.
[1:31:00] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, what?
[1:31:03] Of course. You would though.
[1:31:07] So feeling of surrounding himself with some of the best in
[1:31:09] their field with his crew all add an essential texture and
[1:31:13] layers to Scario. Definitely.
[1:31:18] The end. Before the deal goes down, Kate
[1:31:23] is exhausted and is in desperate need of some RNR.
[1:31:27] Her and Reggie head over to the Wild Pony for a few cowboy
[1:31:30] brewskies, but things go very, very bad.
[1:31:33] Yeah, of course. You know, we're talking about
[1:31:34] Sicario here of. Course it goes back, yeah.
[1:31:37] Of course it does, yeah. Bit of karaoke, then early
[1:31:39] night. Yeah.
[1:31:42] No, no, no, no. I really feel for Kate at the
[1:31:45] Wild Pony here. Her head's spinning, She doesn't
[1:31:48] know which way is up, where her allegiances lie.
[1:31:51] She's taking them smoking again and all she wants to do is have
[1:31:54] a drink to let her hair down. I've read she's skipping out in
[1:31:56] the first round as well. I get the table.
[1:32:01] Dick move. Real brother and sister, that.
[1:32:04] Yeah, it is. It is.
[1:32:05] Yeah. Well, that's, it's like to build
[1:32:06] on what you were saying, Matt, they've got such great chemistry
[1:32:09] in this scene. And it's clearly not sexual.
[1:32:13] Yeah. Oh, definitely.
[1:32:13] Yeah. His dialogue is great, he says.
[1:32:15] The bra situation, that's the least of your problems because
[1:32:19] you look like shit. He lays it on.
[1:32:25] Really. Thick one T-shirt a week.
[1:32:27] Where's your personal hygiene? Your eyebrows look like
[1:32:29] caterpillars. I mean, quite unkind.
[1:32:32] Because, you know, we're talking about Emily Blunt here.
[1:32:36] Yeah, well, yeah, exactly. But it does work.
[1:32:38] It does. She takes in good humour as
[1:32:39] well. Which?
[1:32:40] Is a nice dynamic. She only had a baby four months
[1:32:42] ago for fuck's sake. And then when the talk and she
[1:32:48] likes the look of old Teddy Boy at the bar and after a few beers
[1:32:52] she starts to relax and she's actually.
[1:32:53] Laughing and having a good time, something which seemed
[1:32:56] impossible. For this character beforehand,
[1:32:59] yeah, but you feel. Worried when you say that, don't
[1:33:00] you? Very much, very much.
[1:33:02] See, that's terrific, because this character is allowed to
[1:33:05] have a good time. But look what?
[1:33:07] Happens as a result. Yeah, we're not.
[1:33:09] Yeah. And she deserves this.
[1:33:12] It's been all work more play so far.
[1:33:14] Yeah, and there's a great match cut as Ted lifts her up on the
[1:33:17] dance floor and it cuts to the same move back at her apartment.
[1:33:20] Fantastic. Love it.
[1:33:21] Yeah. But things go South very, very
[1:33:23] quickly. Don't they matter?
[1:33:25] They certainly do. This scene, it's so well acted.
[1:33:28] It's so tense, like the brutality of the violence is
[1:33:33] shocking, and it's so visceral as well.
[1:33:35] It's really in your face. And John Bernthal is really,
[1:33:38] really good in this scene. I mean, he's really good in the
[1:33:40] film, but the issue for me is he's almost too good because
[1:33:45] he's John Bernthal. And I don't think I've ever seen
[1:33:47] a film with him in where he plays a good guy or somebody who
[1:33:50] can be trusted. You know, he's bad news in Fury,
[1:33:53] He's bad news in Wolf of Wall Street, he's bad news in The
[1:33:56] Walking Dead. So that flip where KFC is the
[1:33:59] rubber band and realizes who he is and he goes to killer.
[1:34:02] That doesn't have the impact for me because I'm thinking it's
[1:34:05] John Bernthal. Of course he's bad news.
[1:34:07] You know, this is going to be a scene when this is about, you
[1:34:10] know, kid getting the rocks off and it's certainly not burnt out
[1:34:13] his fault because he's that good.
[1:34:14] It's just one of those things where I think, like, Can you
[1:34:16] imagine if that flipped the burnt out and clue your casting
[1:34:19] in this? Would that have been more of a
[1:34:21] surprise? Wow.
[1:34:23] That's really. Interesting.
[1:34:24] Yeah. So as a plot point it works
[1:34:28] great and it sets the rest of it up really well.
[1:34:30] And no one is like letting the side down here.
[1:34:32] And as I say, as a piece of like visual, visceral cinema, it
[1:34:36] works. But I think for something that
[1:34:38] should be an absolute shocker, this should be expected.
[1:34:41] It's expected. This should be like the Rolo
[1:34:43] Tomasi scene from LA Confidential.
[1:34:45] Yeah, right. It's.
[1:34:46] Just not yeah, because I just from the get go, I think it's
[1:34:48] burnt out. Of course he's a wrong one.
[1:34:51] Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, he plays it well, very
[1:34:54] well. I say it's a really, really
[1:34:55] well. Yeah, and I mean, talking about
[1:34:57] the being obvious, he's in the back of the police car and he's
[1:35:00] with the two worst guys or the two best guys that you want him
[1:35:04] to be with at this point after you've seen what is what's
[1:35:06] happened to Kate. And it's just Brolin's carrot
[1:35:09] and, you know, Matt just gone when he brought him back here.
[1:35:11] That was smart. Just put that in your report.
[1:35:12] Come on. You know, it's positive.
[1:35:13] Let's go. Yeah.
[1:35:14] Brilliant. He's just like, yeah, come on,
[1:35:16] you know, let's let's do this. And he's got him in the back of
[1:35:18] the car. And then you just see Alejandro
[1:35:20] just with the door open. He's not committing yet because
[1:35:23] he doesn't really want to commit.
[1:35:24] He's just on the sidelines. And it.
[1:35:27] Is this an interrogation? Because it's.
[1:35:30] It's really painful, but at the same time treats him like a
[1:35:33] child and really big little him tweaks his eyebrow, yes and
[1:35:38] pulls his fucking stop fucking with this.
[1:35:39] I do something. I don't do something, you know,
[1:35:42] And then it's like the most violent wet Willy I've ever seen
[1:35:45] in my life. Like he's going straight and
[1:35:47] he's going for you're going to live, you're going to be fine,
[1:35:51] but your ex-wife and your daughter aren't going to be.
[1:35:54] And that's where they're hitting.
[1:35:55] And that's the whole point. And it's Matt who does that
[1:35:58] through the mirror. And he doesn't actually turn to
[1:36:00] face him as a human being, just as a reflection of himself, as a
[1:36:03] reflection of who he thinks he is.
[1:36:04] Like he's nasty aside of him. Like you can't actually turn and
[1:36:07] face him as a person. He has to do it through the
[1:36:09] mirror. So it's your choice.
[1:36:11] And I think that's what you get from this whole interrogation
[1:36:13] sequence is just like how callous, how dark, and how much
[1:36:17] they're willing to just be so nasty to somebody, but in a
[1:36:21] childlike way for the audience. It's a really great scene.
[1:36:24] And again, really well played out because it leaves you the
[1:36:27] imagination of like, does he get away with it?
[1:36:29] Does he not? Oh, yeah.
[1:36:30] Once this scene finishes, I completely forget about Ted's
[1:36:33] character. Yeah, yeah, it's.
[1:36:35] Gone. Absolutely.
[1:36:36] When we get to the end of it, it might be one of the detriments
[1:36:40] of this film is that you keep looking to the next scene so you
[1:36:42] don't appreciate the one you're in, which is why we have to keep
[1:36:45] moving and maybe why we don't get on the 1st watch.
[1:36:48] So we'll see when we get at the end, see if that actually works.
[1:36:50] A. Little bit of tension there.
[1:36:52] Knife edge. Lovely.
[1:36:54] It's not that bad, is it? A Wet Willy.
[1:36:59] So, a harrowing sequence of events for kids with Alejandro
[1:37:02] proven that nothing will draw information out of a corrupt
[1:37:05] copper quicker than a wet Willy. We've ended the business end of
[1:37:11] Sicario, which plays out like 4th of July on steroids,
[1:37:15] starting with the aforementioned descent into the tunnel.
[1:37:19] Yeah. Yeah.
[1:37:20] I mean, this sort of scene, it harks back to the beginning of
[1:37:23] the film when the first crossed the border and brought on looks
[1:37:26] across the town and called to the beast.
[1:37:27] And this is going into the belly of the beast.
[1:37:29] Yes. You have no idea what you're
[1:37:32] going to find here. And this is one of the best
[1:37:35] scenes of putting you in the perspective of Kid and Reggie by
[1:37:38] this point. Do it at the back, no
[1:37:40] instructions. Just don't kill anyone on the
[1:37:41] same team, and that's it. And everything else is going to
[1:37:45] be handled by everyone else. And that constant coding from
[1:37:48] regular perspective, you know, through the night vision goggles
[1:37:51] to the thermal shots, to the bird's eye shots from above, how
[1:37:55] that's cut together, done so perfectly and so precisely,
[1:37:59] There's a real sense of paranoia to the sequence.
[1:38:02] Obviously your Silence of the Lambs influenced in this scene
[1:38:05] as well, with the clues going in the basement through the night
[1:38:07] vision. Seagull Dog 30 has a very
[1:38:09] similar sequence to the end of that.
[1:38:11] Film. Which I think is the infancy as
[1:38:13] well, but all the same, the visuals with the music couldn't
[1:38:16] the silence on the ground combined with Howard of their
[1:38:19] depth, Kate and Red Yard. It's one of the most tense
[1:38:21] sequences in the film. And when one of them asked what
[1:38:24] the rules of engagement are involved in replies weapons free
[1:38:27] my friend, weapons free. That's one of the best lines of
[1:38:30] dialogue in the film. And because he does not batch,
[1:38:32] it's going to happen now. He's not going to see a note to
[1:38:35] anything anyone wants to do. And then even when it bursts
[1:38:38] into like the shooter, because it starts off like a horror
[1:38:41] film, creep into the tunnel using the knife on people.
[1:38:44] And then it's like heat all of a sudden with the good fire in the
[1:38:47] shootout. And at one point you get kids.
[1:38:49] She looks nervously behind her. And you think like a lot of
[1:38:52] people when they talk about this film, they'll talk about the
[1:38:54] scarf scene. People talk about it with Del
[1:38:56] Toro's performance, the like and sicario to a horror film.
[1:38:59] And this for me is the sequence most like a horror film
[1:39:02] sequence. You're 100% expecting something
[1:39:06] to jump out of her from the. Tunnel.
[1:39:07] Oh, you definitely are. Oh yeah.
[1:39:09] Yeah, even if it's Buffalo Bill, you wouldn't be surprised.
[1:39:12] Some mums flying around, yeah. Incredious.
[1:39:20] Would you fuck me? I'd fuck you.
[1:39:29] Just the sincerity in which you said it, like it wasn't.
[1:39:31] I thought you were talking to me.
[1:39:36] I was like no. As mentioned, Deacon shot with
[1:39:42] the Ari Alexa to get the effect of the night vision and thermal
[1:39:45] views in the scene. There was no effects added in
[1:39:47] post. Deacons used two different
[1:39:49] attachments often used by the military.
[1:39:51] Unbelievable. Yeah, well.
[1:39:53] The soles of shoes were also heated up before rolling so that
[1:39:56] it came over a lot more on screen more clearly.
[1:39:58] Yeah, see. That we see the footprints.
[1:40:00] Yeah, brilliant. The reason that there were two
[1:40:03] different views it's to differentiate between two
[1:40:06] different points of view. So clear.
[1:40:08] Yeah, it works. And Dakin said it was almost
[1:40:10] ridiculous how little light I was using, but I didn't want to
[1:40:13] go too far and make the image look too good because not
[1:40:16] realistically, it just wouldn't work.
[1:40:18] Wow. There's a moment in the tunnel
[1:40:20] where Kid hits her head on the top, and that wasn't planned.
[1:40:25] But real nerve. Kept it in for an added sense of
[1:40:27] realism. It's only subtle.
[1:40:30] It doesn't. It's not like the Star Wars.
[1:40:33] Yeah. And yeah, once they're in there,
[1:40:36] it's amazing, that tunnel. But we start to get a bit more
[1:40:40] clarity when those packages of narcotics are being unloaded
[1:40:43] from the car. The pieces are kind of finally
[1:40:45] coming together about who this family who we've been seeing in
[1:40:49] Nogales are. The policeman, Silvio and his
[1:40:51] son who just desperate to play football.
[1:40:53] That little fella, he's a mule for the cartels.
[1:40:56] No wonder he's getting a frosty reception from his wife.
[1:41:00] And he's clearly in well over his head.
[1:41:03] And just a little side note on his breakfasts that he keeps on
[1:41:06] getting served up, they look incredible, brilliant.
[1:41:10] The Filipino. Yeah.
[1:41:12] Obviously fantastic. Now there's a disagreement
[1:41:15] between him and another guy who swiftly gets a bullet in the
[1:41:17] head when Alejandro shows up. The guy says Medellin to him,
[1:41:21] thrown his allegiances into question and completely baffling
[1:41:25] kid who remains Alejandro of his past life and his daughter,
[1:41:28] which we found out later, which makes it all the more heartbreak
[1:41:31] and that he has to take her down when she shows up.
[1:41:33] Bang Bang, just like that. He can't get his revenge any
[1:41:37] other way. He puts two in a bulletproof
[1:41:40] vest without remorse and just leaves a gasping for breath.
[1:41:43] And we still don't have any real answers.
[1:41:45] We as rattled as kid, were as confused as kids.
[1:41:49] And then when Kate emerges from that tunnel, Matt gets what
[1:41:51] coming room? A smack right in the kisser.
[1:41:54] Yeah, and as we're talking about that smack in the kisser, in the
[1:41:57] moment where Kate punches Matt, he restraining, he restrains
[1:42:00] there. He takes a beat or two in
[1:42:01] between his dialogue. And this wasn't scripted.
[1:42:03] Brolin had forgotten his lines in it the thing for a second.
[1:42:07] It works well though. Yeah, scans it doesn't look too.
[1:42:10] Obvious. I told you it's taking a little
[1:42:12] bit of time to get back to it, but not too long.
[1:42:14] No, no. When Matt finally does come
[1:42:17] clean, it all becomes very clear what the whole thing is being
[1:42:20] about. Alejandro is on a mission of
[1:42:21] vengeance. He gets what he wants and
[1:42:23] ultimately it helps Matt and his crew get what they want.
[1:42:27] It doesn't matter whose side is on.
[1:42:29] And we get the exposition about his family.
[1:42:31] That would have just been too far heavy-handed in that
[1:42:33] original dream sequence. It would have been, yeah.
[1:42:36] These are the kind of people that we're dealing with.
[1:42:38] Yeah. Love it.
[1:42:39] So the whole thing has been leading up to Alejandro tracking
[1:42:42] down Fausto Ala Khan, and you're taking that right away, Westie.
[1:42:46] I'll take that right away and I'll begin by talking about
[1:42:49] Sylvia, I think because we see his journey peppered through
[1:42:53] him. Haven't really spoke about him
[1:42:55] yet, but his family dynamic is obviously falling apart.
[1:42:58] His wife knows what he's doing or doesn't know what he's doing
[1:43:01] or a shifty and he hasn't really explained that he's drinking at
[1:43:04] breakfast. He's trying to please his son.
[1:43:06] He's trying to, you know, just be part of what he needs to be
[1:43:08] part of. But again, he's he's brought in
[1:43:10] something that he can't control. So for me, he is mirror image of
[1:43:14] Kate on the other side of the border.
[1:43:16] And it's how they were and how that works and that same.
[1:43:19] Cigarettes as well don't. They smoke the same cigarettes,
[1:43:22] Indian Creek, which look fantastic, let's be honest.
[1:43:24] And it's just heartbreaking when Alejandro gets in that and then
[1:43:28] you know, it's Silvio and you know that what he's doing.
[1:43:30] And you just think, oh, no, when he drives into that thunderstorm
[1:43:34] and you know that, oh God, his son just wants to play football
[1:43:37] with me. Just like he just wants to have
[1:43:39] a family unit. But he's just, it's so out of
[1:43:41] his control. There's just this incredible
[1:43:44] moment where he pulls up and he's got Diaz pulled over and he
[1:43:47] says the Sylvio, it's time to get out of the car.
[1:43:50] You know what Alejandro is like? You know that he's got no kind
[1:43:52] of remorse whatsoever for these people, but we have remorse for
[1:43:55] Sylvio as an audience. But that moment where there's
[1:43:59] just that shot of Sylvio and there's just the lights behind
[1:44:01] him cuts back Diaz. He's trying to figure out who he
[1:44:04] is, and it's just bang, bang, bang, down, down, down, down.
[1:44:07] Just it's a heartbreak when it comes back down to his body just
[1:44:09] lying there. He's just another number.
[1:44:12] He's not a person anymore. And there's just this real
[1:44:15] precision now from Hal Andro. And he's talking to Diaz, gets
[1:44:19] through the first one. He passes them.
[1:44:20] It's Diaz. Let them go back.
[1:44:21] Done. Yeah.
[1:44:23] It's like a far more mature version of True Lies.
[1:44:25] Like, here's my invitation. You.
[1:44:30] Know. It's a nice piece, but the
[1:44:32] surveillance there, so, you know, he's backed up, yes.
[1:44:34] And then one more time they say we're going blind.
[1:44:37] They turn the cameras off again, so anything that's personal to
[1:44:40] Alejandro that turn the cameras off so there's no evidence of.
[1:44:43] And when we actually find him in that house, when he approaches
[1:44:46] that family, I think this is Sicario for me.
[1:44:49] This is the most powerful scene in the whole film.
[1:44:52] It's based on you experiencing his emotions through absolute
[1:44:56] silence. And there's that moment where
[1:44:59] you know for a fact it's all going to go down, but you don't
[1:45:03] know how it's going to go down. What he says not in front of me,
[1:45:05] kids. So he basically says, well, I'm
[1:45:07] going to have to kill them first.
[1:45:08] Thanks. You don't make kill you in front
[1:45:09] of them, so I'm going to kill them first.
[1:45:12] And there's that moment. You what would your wife be
[1:45:13] proud of who you've become? And there's that pause and it's
[1:45:18] so fucking beautiful. It's just so beautifully done by
[1:45:21] Deltori. He's just don't forget about me
[1:45:23] daughter. And then it cuts to the wife
[1:45:26] because she knows how how important that is.
[1:45:28] And she's like, oh, we're all dead.
[1:45:31] And then we're just there's that cut to the wide, which is
[1:45:33] beautiful. Just that side shot.
[1:45:35] It was just lying on the ground to finish your meal.
[1:45:38] Bang. And then there's just that other
[1:45:39] bang. And then there's that cut to
[1:45:41] black. And the last thing he has to do
[1:45:42] was go to kids. And then we cut to that
[1:45:44] beautiful shot again, if the dust coming through, she's on
[1:45:47] the balcony. And he says, I wouldn't stand on
[1:45:49] any balconies in the future or, you know, anytime soon goes back
[1:45:53] through. And he just expects that to sign
[1:45:54] it. But there's this real muteness
[1:45:57] from Del Toro when she's crying and he just wipes the tears
[1:46:00] away. And there's this moment where
[1:46:02] it's just you're going to be committing suicide because no
[1:46:05] one's going to believe I was here.
[1:46:06] No one's going to know I was here.
[1:46:07] Everyone's going to believe you've shot yourself because of
[1:46:09] what you've been through. You know for a fact that I've
[1:46:11] won. This is a world of wolves.
[1:46:13] And you're not a wolf. Yes, you're out of your depth.
[1:46:15] Let it go. Strips the gun, throws it away.
[1:46:18] And then she has that incredible moment, which is very corns for
[1:46:21] me, very No country for old men. And you get that incredible
[1:46:24] moment again, talking about Deacon's, talking about his
[1:46:26] crew. Del Toro leaves the frame.
[1:46:27] And then we push focus on Emily Blunt in the background as her
[1:46:31] head comes down, as she hangs her head, and that's it.
[1:46:35] And then we'll finish on the football match, which is
[1:46:37] naturally bordered. You've got you.
[1:46:39] You know, the game. That's where you play it, inside
[1:46:42] of these borders. As soon as the kid kicks the
[1:46:44] ball over the goal, over the borders, the guns go off.
[1:46:46] Yeah, but Silvio's kid doing it, and it's the wife.
[1:46:51] There's no way we can avoid this.
[1:46:52] It's always going to happen. There's always going to be
[1:46:54] fireworks. It's an incredible ending.
[1:46:56] It is amazing. And from an incredible ending to
[1:47:00] an incredible final question. OK.
[1:47:02] From one of our patrons. Our final one comes from Emily.
[1:47:05] Hello, Emily. Hello, Emily.
[1:47:07] Hello, Emily. The Emily.
[1:47:08] Emily B. Is it Emily Blair?
[1:47:10] Who knows? Maybe that's why she's only
[1:47:12] given her first name. She remains Incognito.
[1:47:15] Mat Wonderful. All right.
[1:47:17] Emily says the family dinner at the end of Sakari was certainly
[1:47:20] one of the most shocking that I've seen on screen, But meal
[1:47:23] times and movies feel like a great opportunity to trap
[1:47:26] characters together for a hot woman moment, tense
[1:47:28] confrontation or some other pivotal events.
[1:47:31] What are your favorite or most iconic movie scenes around the
[1:47:34] dining table? The Untouchables baseball bat
[1:47:36] scene comes to mind for me. That's what Emily says.
[1:47:39] She also says big thanks from Toronto.
[1:47:42] My dad Chris got me hooked on the pod and we love breaking
[1:47:45] down your breakdowns together, which is.
[1:47:47] Very nice. Oh, lovely.
[1:47:50] Hello Chris as well then. Yeah, hello, Chris.
[1:47:52] So, Emily. Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
[1:47:53] OK. I think the dinner table scene
[1:47:55] in Goodfellas obviously is the one that comes to mind first.
[1:47:58] Oh, yeah. Do you see my painting?
[1:48:00] It's delicious. Who puts ketchup on like that?
[1:48:03] That's too much ketchup. But who would ketchup?
[1:48:05] You got no control. No control whatsoever.
[1:48:08] It's all over the place. Another one that leaps to mind
[1:48:10] is the horrific end into Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
[1:48:14] Yes. One of the most grueling scenes
[1:48:16] in history, not least because of what went on behind the scenes.
[1:48:20] And if you don't know, that's in our archive.
[1:48:23] Yeah. And yes, my final one, I'm going
[1:48:26] to come at you left field. It's from Shrek 2 when they have
[1:48:34] dinner at Princess Fiona's parents, players, Harold Shrek,
[1:48:39] Fiona, Donkey. That's amazing.
[1:48:43] It's. Brilliant.
[1:48:44] That's really funny, yeah. It's I've went for really heroin
[1:48:52] ones but that's brilliant. I love that.
[1:48:54] Well, all the ones I was thinking about were miserable,
[1:48:57] so I've needed some like, but there's still a big argument
[1:49:00] going on in that scene, yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
[1:49:02] Yeah. Matt, what about you?
[1:49:04] Dinner table scenes. I'm going for three First one,
[1:49:07] I'm going for Hereditary. Tony Collett's meltdown at the
[1:49:12] family, which is so uncomfortable and difficult to
[1:49:17] sit through. She is.
[1:49:19] I mean, we've always sang her praises.
[1:49:21] She is magnificent in. That film that would say with
[1:49:25] that fucking face on your face. Completely totally different
[1:49:31] because this one has absolutely played flaps, but Beetlejuice.
[1:49:35] Oh. Brilliant.
[1:49:37] Yeah, I love it. And the last one, I'm pulling
[1:49:39] out one of the big guns, Citizen Kane.
[1:49:42] The scene of. Kane and his wife with the
[1:49:44] dinner table and it keeps going forward a few years as the
[1:49:47] marriage. Disintegrates.
[1:49:48] It's also lovey dovey and by then they're just hurling
[1:49:51] daggers at each other across the table store.
[1:49:54] Yep, going to end on Citizen Kane.
[1:49:56] Fantastic. Highbrow, highbrow mass.
[1:49:58] That's me as usual. And what about you STI?
[1:50:02] Had a couple that I had a red tree, obviously, I had Texas
[1:50:04] Chainsaw, obviously, but the three others that you guys
[1:50:07] didn't come up with, I mean, it's dinner with Andrea Cheat.
[1:50:13] Can I do that? Of course you can.
[1:50:16] Course I can. So I'm doing that one and I'm
[1:50:18] doing a Temple of Doom. Shields monkey brains.
[1:50:21] Yeah, just stuck with my heart, you know?
[1:50:23] Yeah, Snake surprise was every single bit of that just freaked
[1:50:28] me out and really entertained as a kid.
[1:50:30] But one that stuck with me recently is the end of Don't
[1:50:32] Look Up where things just crashing down and they're just
[1:50:37] trying to have one last family dinner and trying to make
[1:50:39] everything normal again. Excellent.
[1:50:41] Some great meals to be had in those scenes.
[1:50:44] Absolutely. Yeah.
[1:50:46] And thank you very much for the question, Emily.
[1:50:48] Much appreciated. Yes, Thank you, Chris.
[1:50:51] Hope you guys enjoys discussing that one a bit.
[1:50:52] More yes, very much, and without a hand row pin, a little visit
[1:50:56] to Key to get it a sign that everything was on the open up.
[1:50:59] It's the most fit and end to oblique and morally ambiguous
[1:51:02] film, and an outstanding one as well.
[1:51:05] Generally is. Reception and awards.
[1:51:12] Sakari will open at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2015,
[1:51:15] competing for The Palm Door before being released in
[1:51:18] September. The film was met with some
[1:51:20] controversy upon release, with scrutiny coming from the mayor
[1:51:23] of Juarez, who implored people to boycott the film.
[1:51:26] He was of the opinion that the film reflected the city
[1:51:29] negatively and incorrectly as it did the scene.
[1:51:32] Steady decline in violence since 2010 I.
[1:51:35] Could say that, yeah. Understandable.
[1:51:39] But despite the Upper or Sicario was a big hit at the box office,
[1:51:42] and on a $30 million budget, it returned 85,000,000 worldwide.
[1:51:46] It was never going to ruffle the feathers of the 2 billion that
[1:51:49] The Force Awakens earned, but for this film, it's still pretty
[1:51:53] impressive. Yeah.
[1:51:55] It was also a hit with critics, wasn't it, Westie?
[1:51:58] It was, Mark Hamoud said. What makes this work is that
[1:52:01] Emily Blunt is terrific and Benicio Del Toro has this
[1:52:04] eye-catching appearance as a Riddle and an enigma.
[1:52:07] Yes, indeed, Which is? Very true.
[1:52:10] It is an Empire gave it the full 5 out of five and they said a
[1:52:14] beautifully murky, hard edged thriller.
[1:52:16] Quite simply, one of the best films of the year.
[1:52:19] No arguing there. But what about our man in the
[1:52:22] field, Big Roger Dodger Ebert? What do you think he gave him
[1:52:25] out of four? I'm.
[1:52:27] Gonna go 3 1/2. 3.5 Sure, Matt. I'll go three.
[1:52:31] I don't think you gave the full 4.
[1:52:33] Matt, you nailed it. Three out of four.
[1:52:37] Nice, nice. Rog said a Time Sicario is
[1:52:40] deeply satisfying, intense examination of a war with no
[1:52:43] rules of engagement, driven by a spectacular performance by
[1:52:46] Benicio del Toro. Other times, especially in its
[1:52:50] middle act, Sicario can be frustratingly self indulgent,
[1:52:53] filled with overhead helicopter shots of the Mexican border and
[1:52:56] a thump and pretentious score. That's unfair.
[1:53:01] That is unfair because those two things, I think, elevate the.
[1:53:04] Work really well together. Imagine not having them in.
[1:53:10] And now it has 7.7 out of 10 on IMDb and 92% on Rotten Tomatoes.
[1:53:16] And finally, Sicario was also well received on the award
[1:53:20] circuit. It's list of nominations were As
[1:53:22] long as my Arm tiny arms. Which was as long as something
[1:53:26] else. It received over 70 nominations,
[1:53:32] winning a smattering at the lower key ceremonies.
[1:53:36] And of the high profile award ceremonies, it was nominated for
[1:53:40] Best Cinematography, Original Score and Sound Editing at the
[1:53:43] Oscars. Yeah, Emmanuel Lubensky won
[1:53:46] cinematography for The Revenant. Yeah, anyone.
[1:53:50] Morricone won score for The Hateful 8 and Mad Max won for
[1:53:53] sound edit and can't really complain about.
[1:53:56] The tougher on that, I mean the revenant outrageous.
[1:53:59] Yeah, yeah, competition there. Morricone winning his only
[1:54:02] competitive Oscar. Yeah, that's fair enough.
[1:54:05] Yeah, Yeah. And at the Baftas, it was also
[1:54:07] nominated for Cinematography and score, along with del Toro for
[1:54:10] Best Support Network. Yes, but to no avail
[1:54:13] unfortunately. Very shame, shame.
[1:54:16] However, Sicario was a triumph for all involved, pulling off
[1:54:19] the coveted 1-2 punch of critical and commercial success.
[1:54:23] Definitely. Sequels and influence.
[1:54:30] The success of Sicario led to a fast track sequel, Sicario de of
[1:54:34] the Soldado, which came out three years later in 2018, also
[1:54:38] written by Taylor Sheridan, with Italian director Stefano Salima
[1:54:42] replacing Denny Villeneuve in the hot seat.
[1:54:45] Matt, your thoughts on that sequel?
[1:54:47] Seen it once, it didn't really stick in the mind too long and
[1:54:51] unlike the original I've not really felt the need to go back
[1:54:54] to it. I think my main take away from
[1:54:56] it is it actually kind of reinforced why I wanted to come
[1:54:58] back to this, because the sequel didn't have Emily Blunt and it
[1:55:04] made me realize there's someone she brought to the original and
[1:55:06] it doesn't have to need real life.
[1:55:08] And that made me appreciate what he did with the original because
[1:55:11] I just thought it had not of the tension of this one.
[1:55:13] So I might give it another go at some points if it's on and
[1:55:17] there's nothing else to watch, but it didn't really leave much.
[1:55:19] There's always something else. You know I'm lying.
[1:55:23] To be honest, I'll never watch it again.
[1:55:24] Yeah. Yeah.
[1:55:25] Something else I want to watch. Yeah.
[1:55:26] Very much the same. I mean when I first saw it, that
[1:55:29] opening sequence, I mean that is that is hard hitting.
[1:55:32] Yes, it is. But I think the person who's
[1:55:34] learned the most from the sequel is Taylor Sheridan, in that, you
[1:55:38] know, you can't just write whatever you want and it works.
[1:55:40] I think you need somebody who's going to trim your work.
[1:55:42] You need somebody who's going to kind of oversee it.
[1:55:44] And I think he learned a lot from the second one.
[1:55:46] And that is so there's so much fat on the bone where the first
[1:55:50] one is so thin. It's so lean, it's so precise,
[1:55:53] so to the point. It's a difficult second album,
[1:55:56] isn't it? For Taylor Sheridan, it's
[1:55:57] everything into the first one and he's trying to reclaim the
[1:56:00] same from the 2nd and it just doesn't work because I think all
[1:56:03] the characters that you see in the second one, we've seen
[1:56:06] enough of them in the first one. We've seen the arcs complete and
[1:56:08] we don't need really need to see anymore because it's just tired.
[1:56:11] It's got a few stand out scenes. It's.
[1:56:13] All right, Yeah, the opening signature is amazing.
[1:56:15] I thought about here we go, we're back.
[1:56:16] But the border crossing with the kidnapped cartel daughter is is
[1:56:21] a good sequence. Tense.
[1:56:22] I was always surprised that it just slipped out without much
[1:56:25] fanfare, and I was also surprised that it retained the
[1:56:27] talents of brawling and Del Toro, and that it was written by
[1:56:30] Sheridan. Hilda Goodnight Ortea does a
[1:56:34] good job of imitating Johansson's work on the score,
[1:56:37] but it doesn't have the visual language that Villeneuve brought
[1:56:39] to it. Salima tries to do a good job of
[1:56:42] maintaining consistency, but I just don't think he's good
[1:56:44] enough directed to pull off what they needed.
[1:56:46] No, no. And very similar to you, man.
[1:56:49] I don't think it's got the emotional core of the first
[1:56:50] film. The reason for that is Emily
[1:56:52] Blunt, isn't it? Oh.
[1:56:53] Absolutely. Yeah, of course.
[1:56:55] Not taking too much worth in the film because it's, you know,
[1:56:57] it's a solid thriller. It just doesn't have the magic
[1:56:59] of the original film and, and it feels a little unnecessary.
[1:57:02] Yeah. Sheridan said that there was no
[1:57:04] room for Emily Blunt and the character of Case.
[1:57:06] He said that her act was complete and he couldn't figure
[1:57:08] out a way to write her into the story, which is fair enough.
[1:57:12] Yeah, totally fair enough. Del Toro likened the sequel to
[1:57:15] the Doors second album, Strange Days.
[1:57:18] He said it might not be as tight as the first one, but it has a
[1:57:21] mood and I tend to play the second album more than the first
[1:57:24] one, even though the first one's got all the great hits.
[1:57:27] No. Fair enough.
[1:57:28] I might give it another try then.
[1:57:29] To be honest, don't bother. Well, tell that Benicio.
[1:57:34] I won't. No, no, no.
[1:57:35] I'll give it a try. That's the case.
[1:57:37] A third film in the Sicario universe was announced before
[1:57:40] the second one even came out, entitled Sicario Capos.
[1:57:43] However, things have gone quiet on the Sicario front.
[1:57:46] He is hoping that if they do resurrect it, they find a spot
[1:57:49] for Emily Blunt in the story. Yeah, I think so.
[1:57:51] I think it'd be a really good series.
[1:57:53] And what about the original films Legacy and influence?
[1:57:56] Westie, where have you seen that in movies since?
[1:57:59] Pretty much in everything that's come since with that kind of
[1:58:04] realistic vibe to it, that realistic element to it.
[1:58:07] But the thing that I've seen most is Taylor Sheridans career
[1:58:11] very much because I think without the help of in a, I
[1:58:14] think without the help of, you know, the editing of that
[1:58:17] script, the taking away of all of this shit, the taking away of
[1:58:20] all of the exposition that he didn't want in there, but he
[1:58:22] didn't realize was in there anyway.
[1:58:24] I think he's learned so much from what is being put into the
[1:58:28] finished version of Sicario. And I think he's watched Sicario
[1:58:31] and thought, I've got a career because I need to just keep
[1:58:35] doing what I'm doing, but not as much maybe.
[1:58:37] And what if I did that with something that I'm really
[1:58:40] interested in, like a Western? But I bring it up to date and I
[1:58:43] make it now, but I keep the same kind of parameters on it.
[1:58:46] So for me, I think it's everything that Taylor
[1:58:49] Sheridan's done. I mean hella high water.
[1:58:50] It's a good film. There's probably a plethora of
[1:58:53] films that I go through and tell about this is influenced by the
[1:58:55] Carry off this, but it's just going to be obvious.
[1:58:57] I think the best thing to see from this is Taylor Sheridan's
[1:59:00] career and what he's learned from this.
[1:59:03] And I think that's to the news. Absolute testament to go, yeah,
[1:59:08] write everything down, but you don't need to because this is
[1:59:11] how it works. Yeah, look how successful
[1:59:13] Sheridan's been since this. And I think that's the the main
[1:59:16] take away from Sicario and its main kind of influence.
[1:59:19] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
[1:59:20] When I looked it up, I was really surprised because it's a
[1:59:22] huge coincidence that Narcos, the drama scene, we started the
[1:59:25] same year as this. Yes, that could this morning
[1:59:27] came a couple years after. Yeah, and.
[1:59:29] That was like 2018 or something. Yeah, I was sure it was going to
[1:59:34] be that and that would be my opening thing.
[1:59:36] Well, obviously Narcos wouldn't exist.
[1:59:38] So yeah, it's kind of amazing that came out the same year for
[1:59:41] me. Yes, absolutely.
[1:59:42] Put Taylor shouting on the map. I think it just stands up as the
[1:59:45] kind of film which goes into that murky morality that a lot
[1:59:49] of other films want to do, but they probably don't do it quite
[1:59:51] as well. I think also just the fact I
[1:59:53] think this is the one that I really think made feel love in
[1:59:56] mainstream director. Everyone else was a bit more art
[1:59:59] house. I think.
[2:00:01] I don't know if he would be on the list to get like the Blade
[2:00:04] Runner gig for example, if he hadn't shown he can do
[2:00:07] blockbuster stuff in kind of inverted commas like this.
[2:00:11] And then really, I mean, just enough on for me, probably the
[2:00:14] main take away. I think this was just such a
[2:00:16] huge rug on the ladder for Emily Blunt to prove this is just one
[2:00:19] of the best actresses working today.
[2:00:21] You know, it's still absolutely probably like top three, top
[2:00:24] five performances for her. Yeah, I'm not going to labour
[2:00:26] the point. I agree with everything that you
[2:00:28] fellas have said. Yeah, I do think it's been
[2:00:31] equally influential on the small and big screen with works like
[2:00:34] Eastwood's The Mule, that American made film with Cruise.
[2:00:39] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, a lot in there, yeah.
[2:00:42] And countless Netflix drug trade docs all sprout and after this
[2:00:46] as well. Yeah.
[2:00:48] And yeah, Sheridan's career wouldn't have happened or
[2:00:52] certainly would look very different.
[2:00:54] Exactly the same with Denis Villeneuve's career.
[2:00:57] I just don't think he's he's directing the sequel to Blade
[2:00:59] Runner or the Dunes that you films without this.
[2:01:02] Yeah, this and arrival, I think. This and arrival, Yeah,
[2:01:04] absolutely. Hand in hand, it's like I can do
[2:01:06] sci-fi, I can do grounded. Yes, exactly.
[2:01:08] Well, you can do Blade Runner. You can do, yeah.
[2:01:10] Yeah, exactly. And yeah, Emily Blunt the same,
[2:01:13] this and The Edge of Tomorrow and the Year before.
[2:01:17] I mean, that just put her up into like the elite level of
[2:01:20] performance and, and it's a perch she hasn't come down from.
[2:01:23] Yeah, definitely. Yeah, amazing.
[2:01:24] So a decent sequel, possibly another one on the way, but the
[2:01:27] original had huge implications on the trajectory of Taylor
[2:01:30] Sheridan, Emily Blunt and Geneva, North Korea, and for
[2:01:33] that we must be very thankful. Indeed.
[2:01:36] Yeah. All the right movies ranking.
[2:01:43] The final part of our show is to summarize and score Sicario out
[2:01:46] of 10. Westie, what do you have for us?
[2:01:49] Normally I'm like, oh, well, I've said everything in the
[2:01:51] episode. I don't really feel like I've
[2:01:52] said everything that I wanted to say in the episode, bizarrely,
[2:01:55] you know? Stop in everyone.
[2:01:57] Here we go. No, no, no, no, I'm not going to
[2:01:59] go down that route. I just think because that is the
[2:02:02] kind of film that this is, you can't get it on the first watch.
[2:02:05] You're not going to get everything we said on the first
[2:02:06] listen because you need to go back and watch it again.
[2:02:09] And what were they talking about there and what did that mean
[2:02:11] there and how was that done? And I think that's how this is
[2:02:14] constructed. I think it's on purpose.
[2:02:16] It's purposefully made so that it's not easily absorbed, so
[2:02:21] that you have to go back and you have to experience it again and
[2:02:23] again and again. And then when it clicks, it
[2:02:25] becomes a masterpiece. But it takes a long time for
[2:02:27] that to happen. Yes, it is a masterpiece in what
[2:02:31] it does and what it says. And the 30 million budget.
[2:02:33] I can't think of another film that ticks all these boxes.
[2:02:36] For how beautiful it is, for the sound design, for the
[2:02:38] soundtrack, for the acting, for the direction, absolutely
[2:02:41] everything works, but it's still lacking.
[2:02:44] It still leaves something. You still have to come back
[2:02:47] again and again and again and find something.
[2:02:50] And I think that's the point of the film, and I think that's to
[2:02:54] its detriment and to its credit. So it's one of them ones where
[2:02:58] I'm really, really confused about whether what kind of mark
[2:03:01] I should give it. I would probably go perfect
[2:03:04] because I've seen it that many times that I know that I can't
[2:03:07] give it that, but that's not going to be very fair.
[2:03:10] So I would not recommend this someone to go.
[2:03:12] You're going to love this film because I know you're not the
[2:03:14] first time you see it, but come back in a couple of years and
[2:03:17] tell us what you think is Corey, when you've seen a four or five
[2:03:18] times. And to me, that's not a film
[2:03:20] that can give a perfect 10 score to because that's not the whole
[2:03:23] point of it. The whole point of this film is
[2:03:24] to be a nine, I think, is to leave that little bit of
[2:03:27] ambiguity, to leave that little bit of mystery, and to get to
[2:03:30] that 10 yourself. So I'm going to give it a nine
[2:03:33] and I'm going to let everyone else get to that 10 in the wrong
[2:03:35] time. Lovely.
[2:03:36] I said at the top, like you, Matt, that I did a 180 on this
[2:03:39] film and I always knew that I I would.
[2:03:42] I just needed a bit more time and space.
[2:03:44] Like saying Westie, it's ripping viewings.
[2:03:46] Yeah, if you do that, I think you'll be ritually rewarded with
[2:03:49] Sicario. It's a gem of a film with all
[2:03:52] parts of the filmmaking process per and specifically Del Toro
[2:03:55] and Blunt's performances, wonderful Deacon's visuals,
[2:03:58] Johansson's Thunder and score. It feels like it should be at
[2:04:02] least a 2 1/2 hour film, and incredibly, Ville nervous packed
[2:04:07] it into two hours. I'm always pleasantly relieved,
[2:04:10] so that's all obviously a positive for me, but it's not
[2:04:14] enough of a positive to get top marks purely because it's not
[2:04:17] one that I returned back to again and again and I had to
[2:04:20] really fight to like the film. I know what you.
[2:04:23] Mean so I'm also giving it a nine out of 10 and math.
[2:04:27] What about you? It's both easy and difficult to
[2:04:29] rate this one for me. On the one added, It's easy to
[2:04:32] split this up into the things that really work for me here and
[2:04:35] the things that don't work that well.
[2:04:37] And the ratio is far more in favor of the things that do
[2:04:40] work. But where it's difficult is that
[2:04:42] the things that don't work aren't inconsequential.
[2:04:45] So it's not a case of me saying, oh, that scene run a little too
[2:04:48] long or that line delivery was a bit weak, things I could
[2:04:51] overlook. But the positives, Blunt
[2:04:52] Brawlin, Del Toro, Coluia, still a work from all of them, still a
[2:04:56] work from Deakins and Johansson and Vale of Harnesses, all that
[2:05:00] together. And what he does is he provides
[2:05:02] his canvas for them to do their best work.
[2:05:04] And the best thing about him is he pulls that canvas really
[2:05:07] tightly. There's no like limp edges to
[2:05:10] this film whatsoever. But the writing is still a bit
[2:05:12] of a sticking point for me. As I said earlier, for the film
[2:05:15] to take like 2 hours to have Kate make this realization, I
[2:05:18] think as an audience we know from the first minute just
[2:05:21] strikes me as a bit, maybe heavy-handed is the best way to
[2:05:24] describe it. And like I say, the Bernthal
[2:05:26] scene doesn't have the shock value that it should have
[2:05:29] because I can kind of see where that's going even on my first
[2:05:31] view. And I kind of realized where
[2:05:33] that was going to go. So it's very good.
[2:05:35] And I've done the 180 on it. It's just that little bit of
[2:05:38] style over substance from my taste.
[2:05:40] And like you, I kind of know why I don't come back to it that
[2:05:43] afternoon. So for me it's an 8.5. 8.5 still
[2:05:47] a good score. Yep, with the scores for the
[2:05:49] car, you don't end there. Our 4th and final score comes
[2:05:52] from our incredible patrons who've been scoring the film
[2:05:55] whilst also contributing immeasurably to our Patreon
[2:05:58] community. Thank you all for your inputs
[2:06:00] guys and gals. Thank you so much guys.
[2:06:02] You forward to this one. Before I give you their score,
[2:06:05] I've picked out some very nice comments.
[2:06:08] Firstly from Shaza. She said a full 10 straight off
[2:06:11] the bat said I thoroughly enjoyed this movie.
[2:06:14] Blunt being sort of a Patsy metaphorically held over the
[2:06:17] barrel at the end signing the form.
[2:06:19] Brolin cool AF in sandals and Del Toro's calm patience at the
[2:06:23] dinner scene. Also one of the best opening
[2:06:26] shockers. Loved it.
[2:06:28] Nice one. Classic shadow classic.
[2:06:30] Don't promote flip flops or that's that's bad news.
[2:06:34] Don't do that. No, Kareem, Helliwell said.
[2:06:37] Amazing characters, score, cinematography in Climax 10 and
[2:06:40] one of my favorite films from the 21st century.
[2:06:43] Wow, Big 10. And finally, Kay, Borovsky said.
[2:06:46] I could tell this wasn't the average shoot him up from the
[2:06:49] first scenes. Ville Nerve composes the images
[2:06:51] on the screen in a way that doesn't show anything that is
[2:06:53] superfluous or cluttered. Also, for a movie with guns and
[2:06:56] violence, the film was quiet rather than loud.
[2:06:59] The only other Ville Nerve movies I've seen at June and
[2:07:02] Arrival, they all seem to have a quiet that is strong and they
[2:07:05] also have strong female characters that go against
[2:07:08] stereotypes and have an inner strength that enables them to
[2:07:10] stand alone for their beliefs. Yeah, wow.
[2:07:13] Nailed it. Fantastic.
[2:07:15] Well done, Kate. Yeah, definitely, yeah.
[2:07:17] Thanks for your comments everyone.
[2:07:19] So what do you think Sicario averaged out of 10 from our
[2:07:21] parents, fellas? I'm I'm, I'm totally in eight
[2:07:25] and the 9:00, but I'm going to go higher.
[2:07:26] I think I'm going to go 9. I agree, I'll go 9 as well.
[2:07:29] You're. Going to go 9 when it got a very
[2:07:31] high 9.5 out of 10. Oh wow.
[2:07:34] OK. Very big, meaning that Sicario's
[2:07:37] overall score is 36 out of 40, messing with the big boys.
[2:07:42] Oh yeah, it's up there. Coming up for ATRM, we've got
[2:07:45] brand new episodes of the Watch List and Double Feature coming
[2:07:47] out this month for our Patreon supporters.
[2:07:50] So if you want to hear them, and I'd be surprised if you didn't,
[2:07:54] patreon.com/all their own movies.
[2:07:57] Definitely. We are taking a small break from
[2:08:00] this show, so in two weeks we'll be putting out an episode from
[2:08:02] our classic podcast archive, A hidden gem, so don't forget to
[2:08:06] tune in for that. Then two weeks after that, John,
[2:08:09] Westie and Matt will be back as they occupied the bridge on the
[2:08:11] River Kwai. A massive film and no doubt a
[2:08:14] massive podcast. Well.
[2:08:16] It'll be huge, that one, yeah. Bigger than a sweat box tell you
[2:08:19] that much? What have you done?
[2:08:20] What have you done? And if you haven't gotten round
[2:08:24] to it yet, please put aside a few seconds of your time to give
[2:08:28] us a positive rating on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Pod Chaser, or
[2:08:31] wherever you listen to podcasts. Just raise us if you don't mind,
[2:08:34] and positively please. You don't have to write
[2:08:37] anything, just click five stars 5.
[2:08:39] Stars will do. Beautiful.
[2:08:40] Easy peasy. And don't forget that we are on
[2:08:42] social media all the time on X. We are at AT Right Movies where
[2:08:46] our movie threads are jam packed with movie making insight.
[2:08:50] Just like our podcast, all the behind the scenes stories we
[2:08:53] tell come from the cast and crew or is verified by at least three
[2:08:56] sources. They're amazing reads, so check
[2:08:58] them out if you don't already. Yes, please do guys.
[2:09:02] You can also read them on Blue Sky, where we are at All right,
[2:09:04] movies.com. They're on Threads as well where
[2:09:07] we are at all the under score right movies, the same as our
[2:09:09] Instagram handle on TikTok. We're at all the right movies.
[2:09:14] We also have a great Facebook group with a great movie
[2:09:16] community and we're on YouTube as well.
[2:09:19] If you didn't know already, watch our videos.
[2:09:21] We're. Everywhere, everywhere.
[2:09:24] That's youtube.com/all the right movies and our website is all
[2:09:28] the right movies.com. Yes, it is.
[2:09:30] Oh, and that is a wrap, everyone.
[2:09:33] We're after a small town where the rules of the law still
[2:09:35] exist. Hopefully.
[2:09:37] No, I'm going to get out of here.
[2:09:38] I'm no wolf. Thank you very much for.
[2:09:40] Listening everyone, we'll see you soon.
[2:09:43] Yes. Thank you so much guys.
[2:10:06] What's the password? Moron.

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