It's a thoughtful film, but also a visceral and affecting one, capturing the intensity of these raids and encounters.

| May 3, 2016

Sicario is as brilliantly made as Prisoners, perhaps even more so.

| Dec 7, 2015

Gorgeously made, with a set piece taking place in tunnels underneath the border that conveys chaos without ever looking incoherent and a throbbing Jóhann Jóhannsson score that's the sound of very bad things on the horizon.

Full Review | Nov 10, 2015

While Sicario may be guilty of exoticising the "murder capital" reputation of Juárez and its environs, it does so in a way that is horribly efficient, exploiting our anxieties and expectations with cruel precision.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 11, 2015

Sicario may leave an unpleasant taste but it is a slick, accomplished thriller.

| Oct 9, 2015

A visceral, in-the-moment ride-along more than a movie to chew over for any length of time.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 8, 2015

It's admirable that the film's taking its subject seriously; it's just not enough.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 8, 2015

The thrilling opening sequence of the drugs cartel movie Sicario is a humdinger -- and a stomach churner.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 8, 2015

By the end, it packs a death stare so potent it will make you want to turn a blind eye to the shadowy brutality of its real-world horrors.

| Original Score: A | Oct 2, 2015

Succeeds in evoking the anarchic violence of the drug wars raging on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 1, 2015

Within this dark epic of American failure lives an effective but decidedly minor vigilante flick.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 1, 2015

Sicario is at its best when its borderlines are fluid and indistinct.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 1, 2015

Far from being just another crime story, "Sicario" is cinema at its most ambitious.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 1, 2015

Sicario offers a subtle critique of all-American attitudes -- especially those to do with intervention in other countries.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 30, 2015

Sicario is a remarkable, thrilling, intermittently brilliant film-and yet nonetheless a mild disappointment.

| Sep 28, 2015

Throughout, Villeneuve excels at approaching the carnage to come from a great, safe distance, and the message seems clear: here is a problem of vast scope and scale, being engaged by huge and complicated forces, and here are its intimate, bloody effects.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 25, 2015

We can thank Villeneuve and rookie screenwriter Taylor Sheridan's tight script, but also Blunt, Brolin and Del Toro, each of whom has never been better.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 25, 2015

Villeneuve has crafted a compelling, unflinching look at the deadly and complicated war on drugs, one that will challenge the attitudes of even the most straight-edged and law-abiding viewers.

| Sep 24, 2015

Director Denis Villeneuve, aided and abetted by cinematographer Roger Deakins, fills Sicario with dread and a violence that happens to be stunning to look at.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 24, 2015

Sicario paints the bleakest of portraits of a realistic situation, drawn from headlines about Mexican cartels that stack bodies with savage efficiency.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 24, 2015