The 2015 crime thriller Sicario had two prominent names behind the movie. Denis Villeneuve directed it before moving on to become one of Hollywood’s top sci-fi directors with Arrival, Blade Runner 2049, and the Dune franchise. After writing the script, Taylor Sheridan became one of television’s most prolific creators, with shows like Yellowstone, Tulsa King, and Mayor of Kingstown. While Villeneuve did a fantastic job directing the film, Sheridan’s script served as Sicario‘s backbone.

Sicario follows an FBI special agent named Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), who is chosen to work on a task force alongside CIA officer Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) and a mercenary named Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro). They are part of a team ᴀssigned to lure out a lieutenant of a powerful Mexican drug cartel who is hiding in the United States. With the team attacking the drug cartels, the story jumps back and forth between the U.S. and Mexico, and by Sicario’s end, the lines between good and evil are blurred more than ever.

Sicario Is A Fictional Story About Cartels & The Drug War

Taylor Sheridan Did Not Base Sicario On A True Story

Taylor Sheridan wanted to explore not only the war on drugs but also the idea of the rule of law and how it doesn’t apply to everyone. He showed this as the U.S. forces that needed to lure out a drug lord broke several laws on U.S. soil and got away with it thanks to legal loopholes. This allowed Sheridan to look at a part of the drug war that other movies hadn’t approached, seeking to shine a light on the violence as a manner of the U.S. doing business. Sheridan said that aspect shocked him more than anything:

“It was literally, to me, the most shocking thing about the architects of the drug trade, their willful use of violence as a method of doing business. And it’s literally that impersonal to them. Effective ways of using violence to control a populace — that’s what they do.”

Sheridan said there are people on the Forbes 400 list who are in that position because they became wealthy thanks to their involvement in the drug trade. He wanted Sicario to show how that causes law enforcement to become a military intervention. He compared it to how the U.S. military can suddenly become the force policing foreign locations, even though the military is not meant for that role. Sheridan played with those ideas in Sicario.

Taylor Sheridan Did Extensive Research While Developing Sicario

Sicario Was Based On The War On Drugs

Taylor Sheridan might have made up the story for Sicario, but he did a lot of research when putting his script together. It seems similar to Steven Soderbergh’s movie Traffic, an ensemble crime drama about the war on drugs and was a big Oscar contender when it was released. When it came to his Sicario script, Sheridan said there was no limit to the information he could find from people on the front lines of the battle on the U.S. and Mexico border:

“It’s a pretty easy thing to research if you want to, as far as an understanding of the calamity that was taking place at the time I wrote the screenplay. You can put in any number of searches into Google and come up with a host of articles. There’s a tremendous amount of various blogs and writers in Mexico who have written some very poignant and tragic things about it.”

With that in mind, Sheridan said he went further than just looking up information online. He said he did a lot of research that he refused to share with anyone. The writer said he spoke to several people in Mexico that he wouldn’t endanger by revealing their part in his research for the story. However, Sheridan said he talked to one contractor with a defense intelligence agency who explained how they could manipulate the law to ensure things happen, allowing the U.S. to break laws and get away with it.

“Now obviously it’s an imagined circumstance. I’m not insinuating that our government is sending out SEAL teams to strike at people in northern New Mexico, but if they were doing that, this is how it would be done.”

Some Characters And Events In Sicario Have Real-Life Inspirations

Emily Blunt’s Character Is Based On A Real Person

While Sicario was not based on a true story, it was based on the real-life war on drugs and the illegal actions of the United States when heading into dangerous situations. This also includes the fact that some of the characters in this movie are based on real people. Sheridan said he fought hard to ensure that Kate remained a woman in the film, while the studio wanted to change the lead character into a man. He then explained that Kate was based on a real person, and her stories influenced his script.

Sheridan said that Kate is based on a person he met and spoke to about the issues that flowed into Sicario. This was a woman, which is another reason that he felt it necessary to keep the gender of the lead character in place. However, this character wasn’t in Kate’s position in real life but was in Matt’s role as someone deployed overseas in different war zones. “She is extremely intelligent and extremely capable, and you could tell she worked at it, and you could see the toll,” Sheridan said. “I thought that was fascinating.“

Sources: Variety