In his review of Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario (2015), The New York Times’ A.O. Scott states that the film’s use of graphic violence felt less like a condemnation of drug cartels and more like an exploitation. Though visually appealing, Scott describes the amount of graphic violence as ultimately numbing. According to Scott, this transforms Sicario from an exploration into failures of the war on drugs as it is intended to be, and into just another violent film. Though Scott saw this as a weakness, I found the use of graphic violence as important in establishing the world that the film takes place in. The criminal underworld found in Sicario is unfamiliar to most viewers, and I felt that the amount displayed in the film as important in establishing
