Like Villeneuve, Benicio Del Toro was attracted to the screenplay’s potential for elevated genre filmmaking, the mystery element surrounding its black-ops characters. “Aside from the opportunity to work with Denis and with Emily again—we did The Wolfman together—I liked the fact that the movie played like a film noir,” the actor explains. “There have been so many films dealing with the drug wars, but that noir element made this one stand out.”
Alejandro is the latest in a long line of Del Toro characters who straddle that same idealism-realism border that calls to Villeneuve. From his Oscar-winning performance as a Mexican cop fighting the drug war in Traffic, to his collaboration with that film’s director, Steven Soderbergh, on Che, Del Toro has always been attracted to what he calls “tainted heroes.” Indeed, the actor has done numerous films touching on the drug wars, including Oliver Stone’s Savages and the more recent Escobar: Paradise Lost. It’s a world he knows, and that familiarity inflects how he plays his character.
“I know a few DEA agents and a couple of ex-LAPD officers that I’ve worked with before, and I asked them questions about the drug war. If I learned something interesting, I would bring it up to Denis, and often it would make its way into the story and the character.”
Emily Blunt, returning to an action-oriented role after last year’s blockbuster hit Edge of Tomorrow, was similarly inspired by real-life sources with her character, Kate. “I like to really dive into research,” she says. “On this film, the most helpful thing was speaking with female FBI agents who told me in great detail how the job affects their lives. I learned that many of the women who do this job are quite shy and lonely—and yet they have so much strength. That helped me get a sense of who Macer was before the story begins, because it isn’t there in the script.”
Sicario does pack a lot into a little. “The movie only takes place over three days, and the characters are given very little backstory—I don’t think Josh’s character has any!”
Blunt’s homework wasn’t all psychological. The film opens with an FBI raid on a house believed to contain kidnap victims, and Blunt is called upon to look convincing leading an entire SWAT team of armed men. “In those sorts of scenes, you’re working with enormous, gorilla-like men who can knock down a door with the flick of a finger, so the trick is to look competent in that sort of world,” she says. “SWAT team choreography is like a dance—it’s absolutely meticulous, quiet, systematic, and lethal. They don’t just barge in and kick down doors. Preparing for it was like learning a specific dance routine. It took about three days to learn; most of the guys doing it actually are FBI agents, and they gave me a lot of good pointers on how to walk and move and avoid shooting your partner standing in front of you.”