Emily Blunt, still combat ready from her role in last year’s Edge Of Tomorrow, stars as Kate, an FBI agent who heads up a kidnap response team in America’s south. During a rescue attempt in a Phoenix suburb, Kate’s team stumble on the murderous activity of a cartel led by one Manuel Diaz – a drug boss the US government are keen to apprehend. As Matt and Alejandro lead Kate further into cartel-controlled territory, the darker events become, and Kate realises too late that she’s far, far out of her depth. There’s an unsettling, alien quality to Villeneuve’s film, lensed by esteemed cinematographer Roger Deakins. As in Enemy and Prisoners, (the latter beingVilleneuve’s previous collaboration with Deakins) familiar landscapes look somehow strange and frightening. The dust falling against a curtain becomes a portent of something horrible. An aerial shot of the Mexican desert becomes a strange and hostile planet. Sicario’s opening is a hackle-raising blitzkrieg of fast cuts and insistent sound, as Deakins’s camera following Kate’s team as it breaches an apparently ordinary house. Somewhere in the middle of the story, the tension unspools as Kate meets brick wall after brick wall of secrecy. What are Matt and Alejandro up to? Why do they even want Kate and her sidekick on their side if she’s only required to stand by the sidelines as their squad of heavily-armed attack dogs do their worst? Those questions are ultimately answered, but only after long stretches where Kate – and by extension the drama – begins to spin its wheels. It must be said, however, that the acting is excellent. Blunt is believably tough as Kate, and we can believe she’s an agent that’s “been kicking down doors since day one”. But the film’s roundly stolen from under everybody’s noses by Benicio del Toro, who’s nothing short of terrifying as Alejandro. A man of uncertain allegiance, he’s the kind of character whose initial air of menace is merely a cover for even greater reservoirs of cruelty. If Sicario is Denis Villeneuve’s A Touch Of Evil, del Toro is its Orson Welles. Slackening though it does in the mid-point – and kicked back into life through a not-entirely-convincing plot contrivance – Sicario is nevertheless another absorbing, unsettling piece of filmmaking from Villeneuve. In Prisoners, he explored a dark corner of America’s suburbia. In Enemy, he explored the inner life of an ordinary man and dredged up hidden reservoirs of pent-up fear and resentment. Sicario lacks the surrealism of Enemy and the more mainstream air of tension of Prisoners, but something equally intense, disturbing and beastly pulsates through this, perhaps Villeneuve’s bleakest film yet. Sicario is out in UK cinemas on the 8th October. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.