jillf-25069

I wanted to disagree with another reviewer who said that the film was not feminist.the the film does not put forward a programmatic feminist doctrine I think it is feminist because the female characters are complex, confounding and fully fleshed out. Especially too, the way Sophia Traub's character is viewed both as sexy but also having her own sexual desires and agency. But the film also shows the problematic nature of those desires and how they can express not only female agency but also maintain patriarchy. That being said, I do think the film ultimately errs at the ending into going more overtly into the horrific. The movie is a lot more unsettling when it is showing the low level humiliation of Swanberg's character than when it is going into over the top horror territory.

I was really excited about Sicario after being a big fan of Prisoners and other films by Denis Villeneuve. However while I enjoyed certain sequences of the film, I have to say that overall it was a disappointing experience. I guess what bothered me the most about the film was that it seemed very misogynistic to me. Emily Blunt is established as this tough female character in the first scene but then for the remainder of the film she's stuck as a fragile woman in distress. The way the film piled humiliation upon humiliation on her character started to feel increasingly predictable and almost sadistic. Some reviews seemed to suggest that this was to show the corruption of the system and the impossibility of a truly good character (ie:Blunt) making a positive change. Yet, Benicio Del Toro's character is given the opportunity to have a riveting action sequence and Blunt's character seems sidelined. I liked the soundtrack and a few of the sequences were well-directed and riveting. But the only message I could get from the film was a kind of might makes right viewpoint.