Sicario

The decision that shapes Denis Villeneuve’s 2015 film most was taken at script stage. The lead in Taylor Sheridan’s screenplay was a woman, and a producer asked him to rewrite the part as a man so a particular actor could take it. Sheridan says he answered sharply and has not spoken to the man since; he wanted the cost paid by someone who sacrificed a great deal to earn her standing to show on her face. How the film works follows from that. Kate is never told the purpose of the operation or the limits of its authority, and the more she asks the further out she is pushed, which leaves the audience uninformed alongside her. That stinginess is the design, not a defect. The second point is the tunnel passage. Roger Deakins shot the heat imagery with an actual thermal camera and the green night vision through an enhancer fitted to the lens. His reasoning was plain: fake moonlight makes no sense because the characters cannot see, which is why they carry the devices. Apart from one outside view at the tunnel mouth, the passage stays inside the team’s equipment. A fit if you accept a narrator who withholds information on purpose. Not a fit if you want to be told at the end who was in the right.