Sicario State
You getting the ‘vibe’ that we’re winning?
Having made both Dune and Blade Runner 2049, Denis Villeneuve is undoubtedly the Sensitive Young Man’s filmmaker. By focussing on morally complex characters grappling with their identities in isolated worlds, he seems to have captured something that resonates with a certain demographic; but this piece is not about his Very Online films, but his 2015 action film Sicario.
Sicario tells the story of an operation by an alphabet soup of American law enforcement agencies collaborating to take down high-ranking members of the Sonora cartel. The story primarily follows Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), an FBI agent whose involvement seems obscure even to her; she’s brought in with minimal information and quickly finds herself in the dark about the true goals of the mission. She also acts as the blank slate onto which the increasingly extreme methods the taskforce utilised are projected.
Director Denis Villeneuve drew inspiration from the extreme cartel violence that plagued Juárez in 2010, when the city became the world’s murder capital. The film is about the extreme lengths government agencies may go to under the guise of national security, and questions the morality of sacrificing ethics for effectiveness in the fight against drug trafficking. In The New York Times , A.O. Scott noted that the film avoids a clear-cut morality tale, instead offering a “morally complicated picture” of U.S. authorities becoming like the organisations they aim to defeat in the War on Drugs.
Kate is assigned to this agency from an FBI taskforce that is working on kidnappings. The opening scene is her team raiding a new house that has 18 rotting bodies of victims hidden in its walls; when an agent discovers a locked trapdoor that may contain yet more bodies, it turns out to be a booby trap explosive charge that kills some agents.
Kate appears shell-shocked, as this is clearly an escalation of violence beyond what she is accustomed to. The system is failing, and the result is catastrophic horror being enacted; US citizens kidnapped, brutally murdered and hidden, and US enforcement agencies losing service people on US soil.
Kate and her role are clearly insufficient to contain this scale of cartel violence; she can’t even, within her remit, react to it. But the US state has an answer; a multi-agency taskforce to ‘shake up’ the cartels. This is led by CIA officer Matt Graver and involves Alejandro Gillick, the ‘sicario’ of the title role. As the film states, Matt’s operation is designed to cause chaos for regular operations to capitalise on;
Advisors like Matt come in, stir the pot, cause these criminals to react and make mistakes. That’s how we build cases against the individuals that actually make a difference in this fight. When they’re nervous, when they stop trusting their crews, when they move their money... these are all opportunities to strike... that’s the purpose of contractors like Matt.
This taskforce clearly operates outside conventional legal constraints and performs several violations of normal procedure, including;
Extrajudicial Actions: The CIA operates outside legal constraints, conducting actions like kidnappings and assassinations without oversight.
Torture and Coercion: The film includes scenes of suspects tortured for information with complete disregard for legailty– and not euphemistic ‘enhanced techniques’, but out and out torture.
Collusion with Cartels: The CIA aligns with certain cartel factions, posing ethical dilemmas about allying with criminal organizations and whether those leading the operation actually believe they are able to stem or control the flow of drugs at all.
Deception and Manipulation: Throughout, those leading the operation deceive Kate, her CIA co-member and operatives of other agencies about its actions.
Civilian Casualties: The film shows how these operations can endanger or harm innocent civilians, highlighting the inherent potential for collateral damage in such aggressive tactics.
The film uses Kate’s growing doubts about these methods to question the human and moral costs of unchecked power in the pursuit of security. As Kate finds the operation is developing with little respect for national sovereignty and the rule of law she is increasingly disgusted, and tries to bring the operation back within conventional legal constraints (those which have already proved inadequate to contain the problem).
At one point, Kate believes she has sufficient evidence to mount a prosecutable case against the cartels, on evidence gained through a raid on a bank used to launder cartel money. She returns to the FBI to argue that this is sufficient evidence to start legal proceedings and vents at her boss, Jennings, that she ‘would like to follow some semblance of procedure, and build a prosecutable case.’ In reply, he points out that they have been doing exactly what she’s asking for, and it hasn’t achieved anything.
Jennings: We prosecuted more felony drug cases in this region last year than in the two previous years combined. Are you feeling that on the street? You getting the ‘vibe’ that we’re winning?
Kate: No.
In this scene, Kate is told that this has approval from politicians, who have willingly suspended the normal rules of operation in reaction to the increasing violence; ‘if your fear is operating out of bounds I am telling you, you’re not.’ Jennings tells her. ‘The boundary has been moved.’
This scene provides a great illustration why this film provides a useful framework for understanding modern politics - particularly when it comes to managing the increasingly violent and disordered threats to national security. Kate is still committed to the conventional legal constraints - despite the fact that these rules have been insufficient to prevent cartel violence from destroying her country and killing her colleagues and that everyone else (apart from her similarly idealistic colleague Reggie) realises this. The politician’s moving of ‘the boundary’ is a tacit acknowledgement that the necessary actions the state must take lie beyond the constraints the state has placed on itself.
We see this dynamic – between what is ‘right’ and what is ‘necessary’ – played out often in the political sphere. The most pertinent case in point is Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, which you can argue is a kind of ‘Sicario State’ (although it should be noted that Bukele has not gone as far as the events of the film – and neither have US agencies).
Bukele has ruled with a policy he terms mano dura (an iron fist), and after decades of cartel violence and control, the country is now safer than both Canada in the US. Bukele has achieved this by governing under emergency powers that override the constitutional, political, and legal constraints the Salvadorean state formerly placed. Under the mano dura, authorities can arrest individuals without warrants, even minors as young as 12, while hundreds are processed in mass trials. Now, one in every 57 Salvadorans is imprisoned, marking an incarceration rate three times that of the U.S. and the highest globally. Bukele’s supporters have dismissed senior judges and filled the courts with loyalists, enabling him to bypass a constitutional ban on a second term—all, it should be noted, with strong public approval.
Human-rights organizations have accused President Bukele’s administration of severe abuses. Human-rights organizations – including Amnesty International - have accused President Bukele’s administration of breaches of due process and human rights violations including arbitrary arrests, forced disappearances, and torture. Salvadoran attorneys have reported that they have documented thousands of cases involving innocent individuals swept up in a broad crackdown, with little to no legal recourse.
A quote from Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International, is telling;
“On the pretext of punishing gangs, the Salvadoran authorities are committing widespread and flagrant violations of human rights and criminalizing people living in poverty. Instead of offering an effective response to the dramatic violence caused by gangs and the historic public security challenges facing the country, they are subjecting the Salvadoran people to a tragedy. Victims of gang violence urgently deserve justice, but this can only be achieved through robust investigations and fair trials that ensure due process and effective sentencing.”
Bukele seems to view these cases as collateral damage in a larger struggle to secure safety for the country’s 6 million citizens. Foreign critics have also focussed on the importance of safeguarding El Salvador's fragile democratic institutions – democratic institutions which were so fragile, Bukele argues, that they enabled gang violence to thrive. ‘Everything in life has a cost," Bukele says. "The cost of being labeled authoritarian is too small to worry me.’ This is strikingly similar in tone to something Alejandro tells Kate; ‘Nothing will make sense to your American ears, and you will doubt everything that we do, but in the end you will understand.’
Bukele parallels Alejandro. He recognises what is ‘necessary’; to override liberal democratic norms in order to provide security and curtail violence. Guevara-Rosas parallels Kate. He recognises what is ‘right’; to stand by conventional legal constraints despite their inability to contain cartel violence.
We may yet see this play out in the real-world US, too. Amongst Republicans, there is an increasingly popular willingness to adopt what is ‘necessary’ to deal with the violence depicted in Sicario. While left-leaning voices advocate for what is ‘right’ - replacing the War on Drugs with policies like decriminalization and demilitarization - many Republicans are endorsing plans to deploy special forces in combat operations against cartels.
Last August, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis made one of the strongest pledges to use U.S. military personnel for this purpose. Other GOP leaders, including Senators Tim Scott and Lindsey Graham, have also suggested military action across the Rio Grande. In early 2023, Representatives Dan Crenshaw and Mike Waltz introduced an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) to directly target drug cartels. At a rally in Iowa, Donald Trump vowed to instruct the Pentagon “to make appropriate use of special forces” against cartel leaders, even proposing a U.S. Navy blockade against cartel operations. Like Bukele’s actions, these would likely be popular; a 2023 Reuters/Ipsos poll found that about half of Americans support direct military action against Mexican cartels. With record-high numbers of migrants crossing the border and the ongoing opioid crisis, there is a growing likelihood that U.S. voters may favour a more aggressive response to cartel violence. Coincidentally, the film’s sequel, Day of the Soldardo, focuses on human trafficking at the U.S.-Mexico border and a U.S. government effort to intensify conflicts among cartels.
In the final scene, Alejandro threatens Kate at gunpoint to get her signature on a document to certify that the operation was carried out legally. In the film’s most famous line, he then advises her;
You should move to a small town where the rule of law still exists. You will not survive here. You are not a wolf. And this is the land of wolves now.
For those who are oriented towards what is ‘right’, this line speaks to the apparent moral turmoil of the film. There no heroes or villains here—only packs of wolves fighting for territory and power. The U.S. government is now just one of these packs, driven not by justice or security but by pragmatism and control. The notion of truly "winning" the war on drugs feels like a fantasy; the real question is how the forces are aligned and who gets to dictate the rules of engagement.
For all its hand wringing, this is the wrong interpretation. Sicario is not set in a small town; Villeneuve makes great use of Juárez and the border desert, and as shown by the film’s beginning - and emphasized throughout by the progressive increase in violence from both sides - the rule of law does not exist.
The film's underlying message is that Kate’s determination to do what is ‘right’ is subordinate to doing what is ‘necessary’. Sicario takes place in the land of wolves. If the state decides not to be a wolf - or is not willing to be protected by people who are wolves - it will not survive here.