Years before he became the driving force behind TV’s biggest Western franchise, Taylor Sheridan announced himself as a creative talent with a screenplay for the ages. The 2015 crime movie he scripted would go on to be recognized as a genre-defining narco thriller, which also provided the launchpad for its director’s ascent to the top of his field.
More importantly, though, the movie in question foreshadowed the direction in which Sheridan’s career is headed today. A murky all-action thrill ride set in Texas and Arizona, while featuring U.S. marshals working alongside intelligence agents to thwart a drug cartel by morally dubious means, Sicario laid the foundations for everything from Yellowstone’s spinoffs to Frisco King.
For a long time, the film felt like an outlier in Taylor Sheridan’s screenwriting résumé. There were plenty of action thriller movies like Sicario, but it was hard to find tonal or thematic parallels between this theatrical release directed by Denis Villeneuve and Sheridan’s Western projects, for both the big and the small screen.
11 years on, however, it’s clear that Sicario was the starting point for the development of several TV shows originated by the Yellowstone creator. In fact, no other Taylor Sheridan movie has a sensibility closer to his ongoing TV shows than this crime masterpiece from the mid-2010s.
Sicario Is A 2015 Crime Masterpiece Written By Taylor Sheridan
With its all-star cast led by Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, Jon Bernthal, and Daniel Kaluuya, Sicario is a tour de force of the action thriller genre, which underscores its writer’s knack for timing a plot twist to perfection. Denis Villeneuve is the brains behind the movie’s stylistic triumphs, but Taylor Sheridan is the storyteller it ultimately depends on.
It’s Sheridan who sets the dark tone of the story, and who varies the pacing of its narrative to ramp up tension with expert precision. His characterization of Blunt’s FBI agent Kate Macer also allows us a window into the shadowy world of special intelligence operations via a protagonist whose perspective we can relate to.
The positioning of Kate as the audience’s guide through the events of the movie, despite her limited awareness of the moral transgressions taking place around her, sets up key scenes to provoke strong emotional responses from viewers. What’s more, the ethical ambiguity of Sicario’s ending showcases Sheridan’s early mastery of the antiheroic climax.
Overall, this action-packed dramatization of the U.S. state’s apparent war on drug cartels operating around its southern border makes for breathtaking viewing. It’s gritty and exhilarating, yet feels authentic and balanced in its portrayal of characters we can’t take our eyes off. It’s everything that epitomizes Taylor Sheridan’s more recent TV writing at its finest.
The Movie Foreshadowed The Direction Of Sheridan’s TV Career
A decade on from its release, Sicario has never been more relevant to the trajectory of Sheridan’s career than it is today. The Yellowstone creator’s new releases and spinoffs on the small screen have more or less drawn a line under the melodramatic tone increasingly adopted by his flagship Western drama in its later seasons.
In place of overblown mob-style violence and internecine family squabbles, Sheridan has plumped for hard-hitting thrillers about organized criminals and morally ambivalent federal law enforcers. More importantly, most of these new shows are set in Texas, where much of Sicario’s plot takes place, and where the writer-producer’s new SGS Studios are based.
Whether it’s Tommy’s compromises with territorial narco cartels in Landman, Kayce Dutton’s transformation into an elite U.S. Marshal in Marshals, almost everything released in Taylor Sheridan’s name since 2024 bears the hallmarks of his 2015 big-screen masterpiece. Indeed, the all-action spy thriller series Lioness feels a lot like a sequel to Sicario.
With his upcoming narco-themed crime show Frisco King also relocated to Texas, it seems that major new releases from Sheridan will keep on reminding us of the movie for the foreseeable future. Sicario epitomizes what’s best about him as a writer and creator, and he knows it.
- Release Date
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September 17, 2015
- Runtime
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122 minutes
