Sicario

Sicario is the most terrifying action film of the 2010s — not because of its violence (though it is violent) but because of its moral void. Denis Villeneuve follows an idealistic FBI agent (Emily Blunt) drawn into a covert operation against a Mexican cartel, only to discover that her government’s methods are indistinguishable from the enemy’s. Benicio del Toro’s Alejandro is one of cinema’s great modern antiheroes — a ghost of a man driven by grief into methodical, terrifying efficiency. Roger Deakins’s cinematography of the U.S.-Mexico border is simultaneously gorgeous and oppressive, and the tunnel sequence — SWAT teams advancing in night-vision green through cartel passages — is the most tense action sequence of the decade.