Emily Blunt's drug war thriller a real rush

Emily Blunt in Sicario.

With its references to ancient Jerusalem in the titles over the prologue - a spectacular FBI ram raid on a suburban house in an Arizona suburban cul de sac- Sicario is going for something mythic right from the outset.

Yes, this might be film of big black SUVs and kevlar vests and night vision raids and deja vu displays of US law enforcement inter-agency politics.

But Sicario emerges, less typical G-man thriller than something akin to Michael Mann's Heat or a Zero Dark Thirty substituting the War on Terror for the War on Drugs.

It's a big picture - helped by the wide-horizon cinematography of Roger Deakins and the deep-diving score by Johann Johannsson - wanting to describe a Big Picture. One about the cocaine trade flowing north through the Americas and how decades of that war have upped the ante on both sides.

Ultimately it falls short of any great insight about that. But it's still a riveting thriller led by the compelling performances of a flinty Emily Blunt as a FBI kidnap squad specialist and a never-better Benicio del Toro as Alejandro, a enigmatically shady character who is part of a covert operation headed by Josh Brolin into which Blunt is seconded.

Though the previous works of Canadian director Denis Villeneuve - like his Middle East family saga Incendies and his murder drama Prisoners - have been character-powered affairs, big on moral dilemmas and existential dread, here he proves himself a handy man of action and high anxiety.

A high-speed extradition convoy from El Paso across the Mexican border back is thrillingly tense. So are scenes in which del Toro contemplates other characters who are seemingly trapped in a hypnotic sense of menace.

For the most part, the story is told through Blunt's eyes with us, progressively, learning only as much as she does about the true purpose of her involvement with Brolin and his taskforce. And the movie is de-macho-fied by having her at its centre.

The target, says Brolin's good ole boy of a spook, is to get the guy behind the guy in cartel land.

That would be "like discovering a vaccine". Trouble is, in Sicario -- which means hitman, for reasons that soon become obvious -- it appears the prescribed cure just increases the tolerance of the next strain. Recommended.

Verdict: A high anxiety drug war thriller

Cast: Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Rating: R16 (graphic violence, content that may disturb)

Running time: 121 mins

Verdict: High anxiety drug war thriller