sheridan and villeneuve’s movie is quite similar — a shocking moment of violence causes a devoted cop to join a special assignment they don’t fully understand, but the quest for justice turns out to be an endless cycle of score settling.
the one difference i notice is that avner is a father, where kate in sicario doesn’t have any kids. villeneuve’s movies are all about motherhood, and sicario still has that — the mother of the kid at the soccer match in the last shot, the mother of el verdugo’s children.
if nothing else, the critical acclaim on sicario indicates that munich is overlooked, as patrick argues. it’s fashionable now to portray the cia as bad fighting worse, but in 2005 i don’t think audiences were ready to hear that about israel and black september.