Film: Sicario

Actually, I'd have liked to go to the Crick Crack Club tonight - they had an evening about the grimmer tales of the Brothers Grimm, which sounded terrific! Not only to me, it seems - they were sold out. Film it was, then - and staying in last night helped with the film list, which was also mercifully short this week. Top of the list was still The Martian - but damned if it wasn't showing at 9pm, at the earliest, in every single convenient cinema! So I couldn't have been back by midnight. Anywhere it was showing a bit earlier was too far out, so I either couldn't have been there in time, or again, I'd have been coming back after midnight. Moving down the list, Sicario and Spectre tied for second place..

Until I checked again today, to find that Spectre had slipped slightly. Fine, I booked for Sicario - playing in Cineworld Fulham, it was cheaper to book than just to show up. With only a 6:10 showing, I left straight from the office - it wasn't too long a walk.

I was really glad I'd printed out my confirmation, with scannable code - the queue for the automatic ticket machines was horrendous. There was some confusion at the ticket check desk, as she tried to figure out what I'd given her - my phone battery was dead, so that wasn't an option - but she eventually let me through. It was in Screen 5 - handily, on ground level - and I made my way to my chosen seat. I tend to pick an aisle seat in one of the side blocks, and I was to be proved right, with such a crowd in the centre block..

Sicario is a crime drama, with Emily Blunt as an FBI agent, noted for her field work, who gets picked for an inter-agency operation involving the big cartels that control the crime she generally deals with. Along the way, she meets a couple of shady characters - Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro - who seem to be big-shots in this operation, but whose actual role is unclear. The title, we're informed before anything else gets underway, is the Mexican term for "hitman".

I get the impression that whoever made the trailer isn't the same person that made the film - the trailer doesn't do the film justice at all. This is simply, far and away, the best film I've seen in an age. It LOOKS beautiful - sweeping, wide-angle shots giving a sense of place. It SOUNDS fantastic, with a terrific soundtrack that pulses like a heartbeat through the most tense sequences. Scarier than most horror films, for sure. It's not a film for the delicate of stomach - and indeed, one audience member left quite early; from the very opening sequence, we're plunged right into uber-violence. This is life lived to the extreme, and all throughout you're wondering who the sicario  of the title is.. because no-one is as they initially seem.

I can't recommend this highly enough - this is a film made by people who know what they're doing. I felt like applauding. This is destined to be a cult classic. Seriously, it's a travesty that Spectre is being given more screens than this - which do you want to see? A clichéd parody of espionage, or something new, dramatic and frighteningly believable..? Not that it'll do much for Mexico's tourist industry, I imagine..

The walk home was pretty cold - it's getting that way, certainly. Well, tomorrow evening there are leaving drinks for someone who's decided not to be forced into moving out of London - fair play to him, he's better off for sure. I can't stay all night though - that's the first of my next two nights in the company of U2..!