Living in the desert numbs you to just how dangerous your surroundings are. Dehydration is real, but only slightly inconvenient, and the beating sun is fatal, but an avoidable nuisance. In Juarez, crossing the street to soccer practice is one such fatal nuisance. The crossfire of drug cartels, mutilated bodies hanging from freeway overpasses, corrupt police carting cocaine for drug lords; this is just the backyard of their lives. The resigned submission to the desert is reflected in the lives of its dwellers.

Sicario dives into these stunning depths of violence along the US-Mexico border. Sicario centers on FBI agent Kate Mercer (Emily Blunt), who, during a raid in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona, discovers that peeling back the thin drywall of our confident security often unearths shrink-wrapped corpses. It isn’t long before Kate is whisked away to a special task force led by Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), whose razor thin smile hides something more sinister than just bodies.

The…