Watch: 8-Minute Video Essay Investigates The Morality Of Denis Villeneuve's 'Sicario'

One of the more purely visceral filmgoing experiences of last year was the hard-hitting “Sicario,” which was the rarest of things: a corpse-littered cartel land thriller that didn’t inevitably resort to dopey action movie clichés to get its points across. The film was also another shattering work from the ever-exciting Denis Villeneuve, whose artistic preoccupations clearly gravitate toward the murky intersection of what it means to be moral and what it means to survive.

The director’s last few films, including “Incendies,” “Prisoners,” and “Enemy,” all have their own unique and respective vibe. And yet all are also fundamentally concerned with the duplicitous nature of surfaces and the emotional cost of violence. In “Sicario,” FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) learns very quickly that she can’t trust anyone or anything she’s being told: the truth is but an illusion in this bleak world, shifting randomly and without notice and resulting in eruptions of violence that are...