Movie Review: Sicario and The Walk (2015)

Hello all,

I know I’m late on the Sicario review but I have a reason for that. Last weekend was brutal for me, and I needed a few days afterwards to recover. But now that I’m recovered and got another movie under my belt, it’s time to get back into it, so let’s do that shall we?

Sicario Review

Plot Summary - Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) and her partner Reggie Wayne (Daniel Kaluuya) are FBI Special Weapons and Tactical Team agents, and after raiding a house full of corpses killed by a cartel, volunteers to help Matt Graver, (Josh Brolin) a Department of Defense advisor whose leading a team on a mission to find the men in charge of the cartel with the help of Matt’s partner Alejandro Gillick (Benicio Del Toro).

Pros - The acting is fantastic, especially Emily Blunt as the idealistic, by the book, law abiding police officer. Benicio Del Toro is also really good and it’s just as much his film as Emily’s. The story moves along well too, telling you exactly what you need to know at the time, just like Emily learns in the movie. It’s also a really cool looking movie too, as it manages extremely well to capture the look and atmosphere especially of some of the more dangerous places in the film.

Cons - Although this didn’t personally bother me too much, the film is super intense and for some people that might make it super hard to watch.

Final Score - 9/10

While it might be too intense for some, for the rest is a thrill ride not to be missed.

The Walk Review

Plot Summary - The film is based on Professional Acrobat Philippe Petit’s (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) journey from 1973 to 1974 to walk a high wire between the newly constructed world trade center towers.

Pros - Joseph is really good in this film as Philippe, managing to capture the range of emotions he felt from the beginning to the end of his journey. It’s also a good looking film as well, starting out with a black and white opening narration for Philippe and then switching to the colourfulness of the seventies. But the key thing they nail in this film is the sense of height during the high wire scenes on the towers and my god they were amazing. Me and the other two people in the theatre were gasping and aweing as the film progressed. The pacing of the film is good overall, the manage to tell you enough about the walk before hand so that they have a good amount of time to show you the actual walk in almost near moment by moment recreation.

Cons - I guess the only kind of negative thing I can say is that while the side characters were good, we really only get to know some of them as the rest are only there for a short time or don’t do too much.

Final Score - 9/10

I went out of my way to see this in Imax, but in any theatre it should be good to see and feel the height of it all.

For any readers in Canada, Hyena Road is coming out this week so I’ll try and see that. For anyone else, think of my next review as a chance to learn about Canadian Cinema.

Until then, I’ll see you folks at the movies.