In El Sicario, style and substance are linked and share a great deal of resonance. Given the amount of time our character spends laying out the intricate power structures and systems of control and even manipulation within the criminal underworld he endured for so many years, Rosi’s (powerful, yet never overbearing) aesthetic and formal control from an authorial standpoint feels all the more prescient. Relatedly, the film’s deceptively minimalist aesthetic, all empty spaces and still, simple compositions, made up of a narrow color pallet of midday-sun-washed beiges, browns, tans, and yellows goes a long way, when paired with the weight of the content here clearly on display, to suggest an unassuming, even banal surface with caverns of implication, meaning, and haunting substance beneath it, very much echoing the intrinsically deceptive nature of the Sicario’s past life. In the presence of a sicario, no word or appearance is to be trusted, as the sicario’s veil is rarely—if ever—lifted.
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
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