With the one-two punch of Prisoners and Enemy, Denis Villeneuve (pictured above) delivered two of the most tense, visually engrossing thrillers in years, and there’s no reason to suspect that the director’s next project, drug runner drama Sicario, will break his winning streak. Lionsgate has set a September 18th limited release for the pic, with plans to expand into more theaters a week later.
Emily Blunt stars as an idealistic FBI agent who gets in over her head when she is introduced to the shadowy world of international drug trafficking by two members of a government task force (Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro). Enlisted in a daring plot to take down a Mexican cartel boss, the agent must rely on her wits and training to stay alive, even as the specifics of the mission lead her to question what ethical and moral lines she’s willing to cross in order to uphold the letter of the law. The story will feature a curious legal loophole in which mercenaries can cross the border into Mexico in order to capture a drug lord.
Jon Bernthal (The Walking Dead), Daniel Kaluuya (Skins), Jeffrey Donovan (Burn Notice), Raoul Trujillo (Da Vinci’s Demons), Maximiliano Hernández (The Last Ship) and Lora Martinez-Cunningham (The Messengers) co-star in the pic, which is from the pen of Sons of Anarchy actor Taylor Sheridan.
Now that Sicario has been set to go wide on September 25th, it will be duking it out at the box office with Relativity’s Kate Beckinsale-powered horror pic The Disappointments Room, Sony’s high-profile animated sequel Hotel Transylvania 2 and New Line comedy The Intern. With all the talent that has been assembled for Sicario though, both on-screen and off, it’s safe to say that, out of all those new releases, this is the one that we’re looking the most forward to.
