Discovering the Gray Machinery
A Real-Time Encounter with Sicario
The Perfect Bait
A decade after its release, I finally caught up with Denis Villeneuve's Sicario—baited by a social media clip of tactical violence so precisely executed that viewers shared it as a masterclass in cinematic gunfights. We clicked hungrily for the spectacle, the adrenaline rush, the promise of violence choreographed with surgical precision.
We got exactly what we craved. And in that moment of consumption, we became complicit in the very system the film eviscerates.
Because what initially appeared to be a showcase of action filmmaking quickly revealed itself as something altogether more insidious—a potently gray moral canvas that refuses the comfort of clear heroes and villains. The film's true accomplishment comes not from the horror within the moment but from the foreboding recognition of what we'd just willingly consumed. That expertly crafted violence wasn't just good filmmaking; it was perfect bait, designed to hook audiences hungry for spectacle and lock them into a loop they didn't know they were already part of.
The Human Fuel of the Machine
The brilliance of Sicario lies not just in its methodical construction of a power hierarchy, but in how it reveals that this seemingly cold machine runs on intensely personal fuel. At the apex sits Matt Graver, the CIA spook—a figure who embodies what happens when idealistic duty gets stripped down to bare metal by decades of corrosive work. He's not a cartoon patriot; he's what remains after a lifetime of serving a system that has hollowed him out from the inside. His motivations aren't driven by ideology anymore but by something more tragic: professional habit calcified into cynical pragmatism.
Below him, Alejandro Gillick, Graver's "bird dog" operates with the precision of grief weaponized. His family's murder didn't just give him purpose—it gave the system a perfect instrument, someone whose personal vendetta could be channeled into state-sanctioned brutality. The machine didn't create his desire for revenge; it simply provided the infrastructure to make it systematic, efficient, anonymous.
And Kate Macer, with her vestigial belief in justice and accountability, represents the fresh meat the system requires—idealistic agents whose moral clarity can be gradually corroded until they, too, become willing participants in the very corruption they once sought to combat. Her confusion isn't a narrative weakness; it's the real-time process of institutional capture, the moment when noble intentions get conscripted by gargantuan systems.
The Organism That Feeds on Souls
This isn't just a machine—it's a living organism that metabolizes human motivations and converts them into operational efficiency. The cartel "goons" are rendered faceless not because they're inherently evil, but because the system requires them to be disposable. The migrants and regular people exist as expendable lubricant, their humanity stripped away to keep the gears turning smoothly.
But the real horror is what happens to those at the top of the pyramid. Graver's cold efficiency isn't innate sociopathy—it's the end result of a system that slowly digests whatever good intentions its operators might have once possessed. Gillick's quest for justice becomes indistinguishable from the machine's need for violence. Kate's idealism becomes the very thing that legitimizes operations she would have once found morally repugnant.
The organism feeds on the emotional debris of its operators: grief, duty, righteousness, patriotism. It takes these deeply human impulses and converts them into fuel for perpetual motion. What emerges isn't evil in any traditional sense—it's something far more disturbing: a system that transforms good people into willing participants in their own moral destruction.
The Banality of Inevitability
Perhaps the most suffocating aspect of Sicario is how it renders violence both bureaucratically mundane and cosmically inevitable. Raids are planned on Dell monitors with the same procedural detachment as quarterly budget meetings. The briefing for a prisoner extraction unfolds with corporate efficiency because everyone already knows how this story ends—has always known, will always know.
When Graver tells Kate, "You went up the wrong tunnel," it's not just critique—it's a fatalistic shrug from an organism that has already metabolized countless idealists like her. The system doesn't need to justify itself because it's already won, not through force but through the simple biological fact of its existence. Kate's confusion, her moral objections, her belief in due process—these aren't obstacles to overcome but the expected friction that feeds the organism's growth. Her resistance becomes just another nutrient to be processed and converted into operational fuel.
This proves far more unsettling than traditional notions of evil because it strips away the possibility of moral victory. The organism operates with the inexorable logic of a natural process, as relentless as erosion, yet utterly dependent on human participation for its survival.
Our Complicity in the Spectacle
That perfectly crafted bait that drew me in—and likely thousands of others—represents our essential role in feeding this organism. We came hungry for tactical precision, for expertly choreographed violence, for the aesthetic pleasure of watching professionals work. Sicario delivered exactly what we craved while simultaneously revealing our consumption as the organism's primary nourishment.
The film doesn't just show us how institutional violence operates; it demonstrates how we, as consumers, complete the biological cycle. Our habitual consumption of tactical breakdowns, our reflexive admiration for technical execution, our sharing that prioritizes craft over consequence—these become the nutrients the organism metabolizes into cultural legitimacy.
We become complicit not through malice but through our role as the organism's digestive system, converting its violent products into social normalization. Our appetite for spectacle isn't separate from the system—it is the system's most vital function.
The Loop That Never Closes
What makes Sicario linger long after the credits is its refusal to offer the comfort of resolution. The systems depicted don't collapse under the weight of their own contradictions—they adapt, evolve, and continue grinding forward, consuming new operators and converting fresh idealism into operational fuel.
The final encounter between Kate and Gillick leaves the knot deliberately untied because in this world, moral loops are never meant to close. The machine's victory is complete not when it destroys its opponents but when it transforms them into willing participants. Kate's coerced signature at the film's end isn't just bureaucratic paperwork—it's the moment her idealism officially becomes part of the machine's legitimizing apparatus.
The Corrosive Truth
In discovering Sicario a decade late, I found myself confronting a film that had only grown more prescient in its depiction of how violence becomes normalized when it's systematized—and how we, as audiences, become the organism's willing digestive tract.
The movie doesn't ask us to choose sides in some grand moral battle; instead, it forces us to reckon with our own role in feeding the beast. That viral clip that first drew me in was indeed perfect bait—not just for the story, but for the uncomfortable recognition that our appetite for spectacle makes us essential to the organism's survival.
We are not passive observers of this system; we are its most vital organ. Every click on that "best gunfights in cinema" compilation, every admiring comment about technical execution, every share that prioritizes craft over consequence—these become nutrients the organism metabolizes into legitimacy. We consume its violent products and excrete cultural normalization, completing a biological cycle that requires our participation to function.
The real target was never on screen. It was originally in the theater seat, then later in the thumb scrolling past another Monday morning quarterback tactical analysis, in the moment we mistake consumption for passive observation. Sicario succeeds not just as a thriller but as a diagnostic tool, revealing how willingly we serve the organism.
We signed Kate's coerced signature long before she ever put pen to paper—with our clicks, our views, our willingness to mistake entertainment for innocence.
The organism continues its work, and we continue to nourish it—not through malice but through our hunger for the spectacle it produces. The most chilling realization isn't that such systems exist, but that they require our participation to survive, and we provide it so willingly, so eagerly, so unconsciously that we mistake our consumption for mere entertainment.
The loop never closes because we are the loop, feeding the organism that feeds us images of its own violence, in an endless cycle of production and consumption. We are not watching the machine work—we are the machine working, as indifferent to consequence as weather or gravity, yet utterly dependent on our own participation for survival.