The former hit man (Icarus Films)

As many great filmmakers know, the suggestion of violence is often more powerful than seeing it. A hint, a moment, or a fragment gives the audience just enough context by which they can then fill in the blanks. By allowing the audience to participate, this gives the onscreen violence a truly visceral feel. In much the same way, the assassin in El Sicario, Room 164, in merely describing his abhorrent crimes in a matter-of-fact way, places the burden of imagining on the audience. They not only imagine his crimes but they also extrapolate from his information: the massive influence of the drug cartels, the incredible amount of pain they cause in the lives of everyday citizens, the great volume of energy it takes to keep this engine moving, and the near-impossibility of being able to slow it down, and such—all stemming from this one man’s tale.

Based on writer Charles Bowden’s article for Harper’s Magazine, “Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields,” El Sicario is formally a very simple documentary. A former sicario (hit man) for a Mexican cartel recounts how he worked his way through the ranks; his daily business smuggling, kidnapping, torturing and murdering; and his eventually downfall and escape from the cartel—he’s still on the run. His face covered in an opaque veil, he sits in the hotel room where he often took his victims, and with only a notebook to draw on and his own reenactments, he explains in detail the inner workings of the Mexican drug trade.

The story is incredibly compelling and extremely visceral. It also presents an interesting moral problem as he meticulously lays out in straightforward detail the vicious and brutal things he did. Because he’s the person telling the story, the audience immediately sympathizes with him, though he gives no argument that we should sympathize with him. By the simple fact of making the sicario the point of view for the film, we identify with and feel for him.

Though the ending of his tale is a bit histrionic and theatrical—and perhaps rings a bit false, undercutting some of the audience’s empathy—the film still, in an emotionally and ethically gripping way, gives us valuable insight into both the workings of the drug trade and the psychology of one of its foot soldiers.