If you want to get Benicio Del Toro riled up, bring up the subject of revenge. Its not like you wont get a passionate reaction out of the sleepy-eyed actor over a variety of different topics say, representations of Mexico in Hollywood moviemaking, or why a minimalistic approach to acting is often more effective, or his skill in giving Wet Willies (more on that in a bit). But when the subject of vengeance comes up in regards to his new movie, the drug-cartel thrillerSicario (playing in select theaters now and opening nationwide on October 2nd), Del Toro suddenly sits up very straight on the couch in his Toronto hotel room. He stops staring at the ceiling, locks in and becomes completely engaged, intensely so.
Whats that old saying about taking the eye-for-an-eye thing to its logical extreme, the actor asks rhetorically. Everybody goes blind. There are folks wholl watch this movie and go he adopts a John Wayne voice This is how you do it. Thats what the film is asking here: What side are you on? Do you follow the rules of engagement, or do you embrace vigilantism, because you think thats the only way to get things done? Del Toro jerks a thumb at his costar Emily Blunt, whos lounging on the sofa next to him, nodding. Me, I belong to her characters side of the equation. There has to be law and order. Or else youre fucked, man.
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That metaphorical dish best served cold is embedded into Sicarios genetic make-up from the very first set piece, in which Blunts F.B.I. agent watches her kidnap-response team get taken out by a booby-trapped house. The promise of revenge is how shes recruited to join a special-ops task force run by a fratboy intelligence spook, played by Josh Brolin as a human shit-eating-grin and why she finds herself paired with Del Toros mystery man, whos also motivated by the promise of payback. (The actor has said inprevious interviews that after playing everything from a cop to Pablo Escobar in drug-war flicks, the chance to explore the angle of revenge was partially what attracted him to the role.) And the concept of revenge has long been a recurring motif in filmmaker Denis Villenueves work, from his breakout work Incendies (2010) to his all-star meditation on retribution,Prisoners (2013).
In the French-Canadian directors eyes, however, vengeance was just one of the things about actor-turned screenwriter Taylor Sheridans script that made him sign on immediately. The movie addresses whats happening in Mexico right now, sure, he says, sitting down next to his stars. But it could have been set in the Middle East or Africa. Because really, this is a film about America, and how the foreign policies of the Western world reflect a notion that were above the law. We act like the rest of the world belong to us. He pauses before adding, Im including my home country in this group as well; youre not off the hook, Canada. We in the West have a tendency to create chaos. And that chaos does not improve things.
That chaos or as Brolins character refers to it in the movie, the need for Americas national security agencies to shake the tree is exemplified in the movie by highly questionable activities like torturing mid-level cartel lieutenants and dispatching in-house sicarios (an ancient Roman term that essentially translates as enforcer or hit man) to do off-the-books dirty work. Meanwhile, drug lords are hanging mutilated bodies in the streets as warnings. Welcome to Juarez, Blunts character is told; forced to navigate these poles, she becomes, in the actresss words, a moral person caught in an amoral world, where having a sense of right and wrong is considered weak instead of good.
As for her tour guide, Del Toros Colombian tough guy with a longstanding grudge and a license to kill, hes played as more of a cypher someone whos clearly in his element when literally calling the shots during a tense firefight yet offers occasional glimpses of being more than just another cold-blooded predator. The fact that hes near-impossible to read was something Villeneuve and the actor admitted was purposeful; the latter even went so far to make him extremely lone-wolf cryptic that he kept jettisoning pages of his dialogue. There was this big monologue that my guy had about his past Del Toro says.
It was this whole speech he tells my character after he saves her life, right? Blunt interjects.
Exactly, yeah, and its only after hes known her for, like two days, he continues. So I told Denis, look: In my experience, nobody opens up like that about their darkness to somebody after theyve just met much less some guy whos a professional killer. So he let me get rid of a huge chunk of dialogue. You know how some actors count their lines? Del Toro adopts a tone that can only be described as petulant-young-movie-star. He got 48 lines and I got 22 lines? Who the fuck does he think he is? Im the opposite of that. Give me less things to say. Let the silences say more.
Then he made me give all those lines to Josh, Villeneuve says.
Hey, Denis, I dont want this dialogue just, like, make Brolin do it!' Blunt adds.
Every morning, Id knock on Joshs trailer door, and Id hear, What the fuck does Benicio not want to say today?' the director chimes in.
He still fucking blames me! Del Toro cries.
Clearly, theres a reason Josh isnt in this interview right now, Blunt jokes. Youd just be moderating a fight.
But the director says he tends to agree with his star on the silence-is-golden point: Filmmaking is an art form that relies more on presence than prose, he claims. And if someone can speak volumes in a glance or a gesture without saying a word or if cinematographer Roger Deakins can suggest menace and moral ambiguity by letting the camera slowly creep-glide into a performers personal space (what Villeneuve calls the visual equivalent of putting pressure on your characters) hed much rather do that. Besides, he adds, Sicario may be a thriller, but its also a film that deals with an ongoing issue that cant be summed up in a few climactic soliloquies. The only worry was that the lack of speechifying might lead some to think they were enforcing south-of-the-border stereotypes that have burrowed their way into pop culture.
Yeah, see, now youre talking about the tricky subject of representation or rather, misrepresentation, Del Toro says, leaning in. That was the last thing any of us wanted. We showed this movie to an audience the other day, and someone said during the Q&A, Well, now I never want to go to Mexico.' He shakes his head. Not every taxi driver is Travis Bickle. Not everybody in Queens acts like theyre in Goodfellas, you know? Denis is right when he says the film is about America, but it does take place in country that has been portrayed recently in a very negative way. Then youve got Donald Trump saying all this stuff about our borders
You dont want to suggest that Mexico is one huge violent wasteland, Blunt adds, any more than youd want people to think Donald Trump speaks for all Americans.
But theres hope, right? Del Toro asks. Its gotten really bad in a place like Juarez, but if you look at what happened in Bogata, Colombia that place has turned. It had a huge problem and its gotten a little bit better. Im not a scholar on the situation, by any means but from what I understand, people just had enough. They came out and demanded that somebody do something about it. The musician Rubn Blades wrote this letter after what happened in Iguala, Guerrero, when 43 students disappeared. Apparently, there was a connection between the government, the police department and the drug cartels that caused this to happen. And he said something along the lines of: This is not a Mexico problem. Its an everybody problem. This isnt a political movie. But we have to make this problem stop.
Villeneuve and his stars are about to leave to introduce the films North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival when the subject of Del Toros impromptu interrogation techniques comes up specifically, whether a scene involving his character wetting his index finger than sticking it deep into a criminals ear was improvised.
Was the Wet Willie bit improvised, Del Toro says scratching his chin.
Whats a Wet Willie? Villenueve asks.
Oh, he just went around the set giving those to everyone, Blunt says.
Thats how Emily and I got to be such close friends, Del Toro jokes, before he and Blunt start giving each other ice-cold stares. Ill get you for saying that, she adds, before the three them break and start cracking up.
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