*spoilers* Emily Blunt wasnt the protagonist

From the advertising for this movie I thought it was about Emily Blunt's character when in reality it is about Benicio del Toro's character Alejandro. Emily Blunt's character was just there to act as a sounding board so that other characters could blatantly explain back story and plot points to her. I know it is dumb when female characters are made into invincible Mary Sues in movies but it is equally annoying when LITERALLY THE ONLY WOMAN IN THE MOVIE WHO WAS NOT AN EXTRA is portrayed as the weakest (emotionally) and least capable person in the film. I would have GREATLY preferred if the movie had made her character a man and the corrupt police officer a woman (in other words swapped Bernthal and Blunt) and had a strapping generic action movie man get wrecked and strangled on his kitchen floor (I imagine with his own belt) by his one night stand turned cartel lackey only to be saved by Alejandro at the last second. Then it would add so many extra aspects to the film: 1) we could still have him be emotionally affected by the incident and get to see the "men can cry" take on it rather than "oh you know women be cryin'" we get instead; 2) Alejandro would have then been torturing a woman in the car which would have added to the "he will stop at nothing" aspect and made his character even more intense, and if you want to make your audience uncomfortable (you know, like strangling Emily Blunt from first person POV) then a brief non-sexual ?enhanced interrogation? on a corrupt female cop would have gotten the job done nicely; 3) when we get to the end and Alejandro comes to get the document signed and he tells the sounding board character they are not a wolf it wouldn't feel like such a "this is a boys club and little girls like you aren't allowed" kind of scene. Just change the backstory to say Alejandro lost a son instead of daughter so that the line becomes "you look like a little boy when you are scared" and it loses its sexist undertone and becomes wholly referential to that character's personal inadequacies and not some kind of "well, of course the only girl we put on the team is the weak link" deal. If you ask me, I'd have made the Jeffrey Donovan character a female to show that women can be capable and ?hardened? in the reality of this movie (just like they can be in real life). I'm not even saying that Blunt was unrealistic in her portrayal, she did great with what she was given to do and I'm sure she probably took the role for all that internal and external struggle she gets to explore throughout... I'm just saying it is sad that they made all of the male characters archetypic "give no f#@k$" made of iron never-cry mother truckers (in other words they were almost all ?wolves? as Alejandro would put it) and then made the weakest character (who is literally told explicitly in dialogue they look like a child) also be the only woman with significant screen time and lines in the entire film. I would be upset if every movie was made as, like, feminist/SJW propaganda (like how 97% of FBI/general law enforcement higher ups on TV seem to be female for some odd reason lately, and the cast of officers/agents on every show is now always required to be a perfectly multi-ethnic cross section of society [with a disproportionate number of Arab/Muslims to make sure we don't make anyone think we are discriminating] even though having a perfect cross section every time implies an inherently discriminatory quota system was used to engineer the result) and there were only ever strong women who were made of iron either physically or emotionally or both. However, I'm beginning to get equally upset by movies like this being so ridiculously one sided in both their cast composition AND deciding to make the only woman also the only pathetic "can't take the heat" character.
If they made a 100% gender inverted movie where there was only one man in the main cast and he was made to be the least effective/weak link character there would be outrage (I haven't seen the new Ghostbusters yet, because frankly I never end up liking comedies that only manage to get me to laugh once during the trailer, but from the extreme hate pouring out of the internet for it I can already tell it must be the Ur example of exactly what I'm talking about). And yet when they do this with the only female in sight it is totally fine and everybody should get a pat on the back.


Overall the movie is OK. Only OK. It is poorly paced. There are points where the Director thinks he is being, like, all profound and artsy, man... but is really just lingering on a scene too long or including a shot of nothing happening for no good reason and it just adds to the runtime without adding any real meaning or depth. The constant switching between regular film and TWO different kinds of night vision was both pointless and ugly and distracted from the plot needlessly without adding anything at all (just stick to ONE type of night vision if you insist on putting it in your movie seeing the screen bounce from almost pitch black to green to bright fluorescent to green to fluorescent to black etc? was just bad). The cop character seemed unnecessary, or at least was given more screen time than needed to drill home the point. ?We have to show the humanity behind the cartel!? And keep cutting back to them over and over? And only this one insignificant guy too, by the way. All those other guys that were killed were grown in a cloning vat and didn't have children or families so you don't have to feel bad about them. But fine, I get it, I will relent that it does add to the movie over all. It's just that the first time we see him I'm like 'who is this and what part will he play in the overall arc of the plot? but by the third breakfast scene I was like 'yeah, yeah, I know real people are suffering in Mexico from the war on drugs, just kill this guy already, and move on, jeesh?. But does the plate of eggs have jalapeno? This question can only be answered by staying through to third act. Ugh.
All the performances and the overall cinematography and the few and far between action scenes were all very good and well executed. The end result is a movie that is interesting enough and high enough quality to justify watching once and does make me interested in seeing the rumored sequel that will be following Benicio del Toro's character more and will be helmed by a different director. I expect it will be less meandering and more focused than Sicario was. I feel there is a fan edit hiding within this bulky thing that could cut at least fifteen maybe even twenty minutes of runtime and make a tighter, much more enjoyable movie without losing any of the actual impact (like cut out one of the cop's family scenes and trim some of the pointless ?Emily Blunt staring out a window? stuff and that saves a solid ten minutes already).


This post is officially about a million words longer than I intended to write but whatever. Here's to hoping for a more compact and less sexist sequel.