The 2015 thriller Sicario is a tense ride from start to finish that benefits from great performances and some very dark twists. One of Denis Villeneuve’s best movies, Sicario focuses on the complexities and darkness of the US’s operations attempting to control the drug trade at the US-Mexico border. By Sicario‘s ending, Kate is questioning everything she knows about her job and how far she is willing to go for the truth.

Sicario introduces audiences to Kate Macer, an idealistic FBI agent played by Emily Blunt, who is recruited into a special task force meant to follow the chain of command for a cartel to find out where their leader is hiding. However, things are much more complicated than they initially seem as she realizes that the team she is working with is willing to go to extremes to protect the US’s interests, including replacing a cartel with a different one.

The CIA’s Plan In Sicario Explained

The Team Wants To Get To The Head Of A Cartel

When Kate first joins the task force, she is given very little information about who she is working with or what their real operation is about. She joins Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), who claims to work for the Department of Defense, and Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro), who she knows even less about. All that she is told about the mission is that they are hoping to disrupt the Sonora Cartel’s operations so that they will eventually be led to the cartel’s leader.

While this explanation is not exactly a lie, it is not exactly the truth either, as the team is hoping to hide their true intents from Kate and her partner, Reggie Wayne (Daniel Kaluuya). The real reason that Kate was brought onto the task force is that they needed an FBI agent on the team to allow the CIA to operate within US borders. The CIA’s plan is to ᴀssᴀssinate the leader of the Sonora Cartel in order to establish new leadership that they can exert more control over.

Alejandro’s Role In Sicario

Alejandro Is Secretly Out For Revenge

One of the biggest players in Sicario‘s task force is Alejandro, a mysterious ᴀssᴀssin who seems to know the ins and outs of the cartel quite well. Throughout the film, it becomes clear that Alejandro is very brutal in his tactics and willing to do anything to get to the head of the cartel. The task force leaders are very secretive about his role and his history, as well as who he truly works for, but Kate eventually learns that the ᴀssᴀssin is really looking for revenge.

Alejandro used to be a prosecutor in Juárez, Mexico, but he gave that up after his wife and daughter were killed by the same cartel the CIA is now targeting. By joining the task force, Alejandro finally gets the opportunity to kill the cartel leader, and because the CIA cannot typically operate within the US’s borders, there is no way for the trail to lead back to him. Thus, while Kate joins the team largely because she feels it is the morally right thing to do, Alejandro is much more hardened and is motivated to kill the drug lord for personal reasons.

What Medellín Means

Medellín Reveals Alejandro’s True History And The CIA’s Plan

One of Sicario‘s most intense sequences comes when the team decides to raid the tunnel that drug smugglers use to move around undetected. Equipped with night vision goggles and heat sensors, the team takes down several people inside the tunnel, and Kate sees Alejandro secretly sneak off in a different direction from the rest of the team. Deciding to follow Alejandro, Kate overhears a corrupt cop from Nojales mention the word Medellín to Alejandro, though she initially does not understand what it means.

Seeing that Alejandro has killed the other cartel member at the scene, she points her gun at Alejandro, but he shoots her bulletproof vest to knock her down and drives away with the cop. After returning to the rest of the team, Kate confronts Matt and learns that Alejandro used to work for the Medellín Cartel. With Matt’s confession, Kate finally realizes that the CIA’s true goal is not to get rid of the Sonora Cartel to stop the drug trade but to move it back to Colombia so the US can exercise more control over it.

What Alejandro Had Kate Sign, And Why She Didn’t Shoot Him

Kate Realizes That She Can’t Beat Them

By the end of Sicario, Kate’s involvement in the task force turns out to be much different than what she initially believed. She agreed to the job because she thought she was truly going to be making a difference in stopping cartel-related violence. However, after learning the real reason for the mission and the CIA’s involvement, Kate is completely disillusioned with her role at the FBI. Thus, when Alejandro shows up to her apartment with a gun and tells her to sign a paper stating that everything they did was legal, she eventually does sign.

Sicario is largely framed by Kate’s perspective on the events occurring, and she also serves as the movie’s main moral compᴀss. However, after everything that she has learned, Kate knows she has no choice but to sign, making her complicit in the CIA’s actions. As Alejandro leaves her building, Kate briefly aims her gun at him, but she is ultimately unable to pull the trigger. The part of Kate that is angry clearly wants revenge for an unjust operation, but she also knows that stooping to Alejandro’s level won’t solve anything, leaving her in an uneasy position.

The Sad Reality Of Sicario’s Final Scene

The Film Reflects On The Futility Of The Characters’ Actions

While Kate and Alejandro’s final interaction shows that nothing has changed in the US government’s approach to the problem, Sicario‘s true final scene is even more devastating. The ending of the movie sees the wife and son of the corrupt cop that Alejandro killed at a soccer game. While the son joins his team and his mother watches, the game is soon interrupted by the sound of guns firing in the distance. The crowd initially turns to look, but eventually, the game continues as if nothing happened.

Throughout the movie, there are brief scenes of the cop’s family as they interact and go about their day, but the final scene without the father shows how sad his loss is. The soccer game and the sound of the guns also show that despite everything that the task force did, nothing really changed in the big picture. The lives of individuals like the cop’s family or even Kate herself are worse off, and their sacrifices were essentially for nothing since the cartel continues to operate and the violence in the area has not changed.

What Happens After Sicario’s Ending

A Sequel Was Released In 2018

While Sicario‘s ending is somewhat ambiguous about the fates of many of its main characters, the 2015 movie was not the end of some of their stories. A sequel, Sicario: Day of the Soldado, was released in 2018 and tells a new story that takes place along the US- Mexico border. Both Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin reprise their roles from the first film, as the CIA is then instructed to start a gang war between two of the biggest cartels that will eventually weaken both of them.

As in the first film, Sicario: Day of the Soldado explores the moral implications of their actions and the extent to which the CIA’s plan really changes the circumstances of the cartels. Emily Blunt’s Kate did not return in the sequel. The film is just as action-packed as its predecessor, although its story is a little more straightforward. Beyond Sicario 2, a third film is also reportedly in the works, though the next film in the Sicario series has not gotten a release date yet.