Taylor Sheridan’s Frontier Trilogy: Sicario (2015, dir by Denis Villeneuve, USA) by film writer Jared Watson

For 70 years, Mexico was ruled by The Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) or PRI, a center-right party known for corruption and repression. With a government that had little to no interest in putting a stop to the drug trade, the cartels flourished. In the year 2000, Vicente Fox was elected president, representing The National Action Party (Partido Acción Nacional) or PAN, a right-wing party rejecting a fundamental adherence to left- or right-wing policies. However, it was Felipe Calderón, also from the PAN Party, who kicked off the drug war when elected in 2006. He dispatched 6,500 Mexican Army soldiers to his home state of Michoacán to deal with the drug violence.

With the knowledge that the majority of drug traffickers financing travels south from American narcotic consumers, 12 to 15 billion U.S. Dollars per year, Mexico reached out to The US. The plan was to create a partnership with the declared aim of combating the threats of drug trafficking, transnational organized crime, and money laundering. Knowing that Calderón's willingness to work with the US was unprecedented, U.S State Department officials announced the Mérida initiative in 2007, passing it in 2008. As of 2017, 1.6 billion dollars have gone from the U.S. Government, to the Mexican government for training, equipment, and intelligence. Calderón's operation has since grown to include about 45,000 troops along with state and federal police forces. Although successful in detaining many cartel leaders, Calderón’s war had resulted in close to 120,000 deaths by the time his term ended.

During the height of the Mexican war on drugs, Taylor Sheridan took notice of the similarities between the Mexican military intervention of the cartels, and the US using its military to police Iraq and Afghanistan. He found it fascinating how the two were so similar, and how they were going so poorly. Shocked at the carnage that was taking place in Juárez, he saw that it was receiving almost no news coverage in The States. Finding the notion to be infuriating, he wrote Sicario in an attempt to force people to have a conversation about it.

It is usually advised not to break the rules of screenwriting until you have learned them. Taylor Sheridon however, never learned them all in the first place. Shifting the protagonist around and outright not giving character arcs to a few MCs, he proceeded to break those rules. He wrote the script in five acts as to make the audience feel like the climax was being resolved only halfway through the film. He really wanted to break the expectations of what the audience could think, what might happen next.

The film follows Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), an FBI agent leading a raid on a suspected Cartel safehouse along with fellow agent Reggie Wayne (Daniel Kaluuya). After a bomb kills two members of her team, Kate is asked to join a joint task force between The Department of Justice and Department of Defense to help bring in those who were responsible. The task force is overseen by D.O.D. advisors Matt Graver and Alejandro Gillick (Benicio Del Toro) who both like to play their cards close to their chest. Matt, a flip-flop wearing easy talker, tells Kate to soak everything up, while Alejandro tells her that she will doubt everything they do, but understand it all in the end.

The movie deals with the concept of escalation, and the questions of whether or not we’re fueling the fire when we think we’re spraying water. There’s an obvious theme of things getting worse, while we keep escalating our tactics. Maybe it’s time to step back, and ask ourselves if we’re even getting anything accomplished, let alone possibly making it worse.

Jared Watson is a moviemaker, writer, and avid cinefile. Check out his work: https://www.ridgeviewdrive.com/