A movie written by Taylor Sheridan has become a streaming hit a decade after its release. Sheridan is a prolific writer who first became widely recognized for penning the screenplays for a number of prominent features, including the Chris Pine movie Hell or High Water. He also directed two of the most prominent movies that he wrote, namely 2017’s Wind River and 2021’s Those Who Wish Me Dead.
However, since 2018, Sheridan has become more associated with prestige television than with movies, as he is the creator of the shows in the Yellowstone franchise. The flagship neo-Western series has already spawned the prequels 1883 and 1923 and has more spinoffs in development. Additionally, he has either created or executive produced a number of other successful series, including Special Ops: Lioness, Tulsa King, Mayor of Kingstown, and Landman.
2015’s Sicario is making waves on Netflix. The movie, which was written by Sheridan and directed by Denis Villeneuve (Arrival, Dune, Dune: Part Two), follows FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) finding herself in over her head when she joins a task force targeting a Mexican cartel leader. The movie was a critical and commercial success, grossing $85 million against its $30 million budget, earning a Certified Fresh score of 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, and spawning the 2018 sequel Day of the Soldado.
The star-studded cast of Sicario also includes Josh Brolin, Benicio del Toro, Daniel Kaluuya, and Jon Bernthal.
Now, Netflix has calculated their Top 10 chart of the most watched movies in the United States for the week of February 24 through March 2. After debuting on the platform on March 1, just one day before the end of the week, Sicario has landed at No. 8 on the chart.
It is the highest-ranked movie that is more than three years old, as the movies above it include the new release Counterattack (No. 3), the 2024 releases Venom: The Last Dance (No. 1), Despicable Me 4 (No. 2), the 2023 movies To Catch a Killer (No. 4) and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (No. 5), and the 2022 titles Watcher (No. 6) and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (No. 7).
It remains to be seen if Sicario is able to climb any higher up the chart, but the fact that it nabbed a position at No. 8 within just two days would seem to indicate that it has strong potential to do so. Additionally, even though the weekly chart will not be updated again until Tuesday, March 11, the movie had risen to No. 2 on Netflix’s daily chart of their most-watched movies in the United States as of Friday, March 7, more than midway through the week that will be tabulated on that chart, which is a good sign.
It will serve to cement the streaming success of Taylor Sheridan…
If the Denis Villeneuve movie climbs the chart, as it seems likely to do, and continues to maintain a position in the Top 10, it will serve to cement the streaming success of Taylor Sheridan after a recent report discovered that his Paramount+ series, which include the two Yellowstone prequels, Mayor of Kingstown, and Special Ops: Lioness, collectively earned the streaming platform more than $260 million between 2021 and 2024. This total was calculated before the premiere of his buzzy new series Landman, which features a star-studded cast that includes Billy Bob Thornton, Demi Moore, Jon Hamm, and Ali Larter.
The streaming success of the Emily Blunt movie is not entirely a surprise, even a decade later. Even though it was Taylor Sheridan’s breakout movie, Sicario remains his third highest-rated project on Rotten Tomatoes. This is even more impressive because, as a writer, executive producer, or creator, he has only earned two Rotten Tomatoes splats throughout his entire career. Below, see a ranking of the critical performance of all of his scored titles where he held any or all of those roles, with scores for the television entries representing the average score of all seasons:
Title
RT Critic Score
RT Audience Score
Hell or High Water (2016)
97%
88%
1923 (2022-2025)
95%
52%
Sicario (2015)
92%
85%
1883 (2021-2022)
89%
76%
Tulsa King (2022-)
89%
83%
Wind River (2017)
87%
90%
Yellowstone (2018-2024)
83%
76%
Lawmen: Bass Reeves (2023)
79%
93%
Landman (2024-)
78%
62%
Special Ops: Lioness (2023-)
72%
73%
Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021)
63%
86%
Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018)
62%
66%
Mayor of Kingstown (2021-)
53%
81%
Without Remorse (2021)
45%
41%
While critics’ Certified Fresh score likely continues to point new viewers to Sicario, audiences have also historically responded well to the movie. With a solidly Fresh 85% audience score on the Popcornmeter, it is the fourth highest-rated movie and the fifth highest-rated project in general for Taylor Sheridan, with a score coming in a full 44% higher than audiences’ lowest-rated title, which was his 2021 Tom Clancy adaptation Without Remorse. Because of this, the 2015 movie could be building additional modern-day word of mouth on top of the bump that titles typically get when they first arrive on Netflix.
Source: Netflix
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I liked the movie.
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|
Title |
RT Critic Score |
RT Audience Score |
|---|---|---|
|
Hell or High Water (2016) |
97% |
88% |
|
1923 (2022-2025) |
95% |
52% |
|
Sicario (2015) |
92% |
85% |
|
1883 (2021-2022) |
89% |
76% |
|
Tulsa King (2022-) |
89% |
83% |
|
Wind River (2017) |
87% |
90% |
|
Yellowstone (2018-2024) |
83% |
76% |
|
Lawmen: Bass Reeves (2023) |
79% |
93% |
|
Landman (2024-) |
78% |
62% |
|
Special Ops: Lioness (2023-) |
72% |
73% |
|
Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021) |
63% |
86% |
|
Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018) |
62% |
66% |
|
Mayor of Kingstown (2021-) |
53% |
81% |
|
Without Remorse (2021) |
45% |
41% |
‘Sicario’ on Netflix: Taylor Sheridan and Denis Villeneuve Thrillingly Teamed Up Long Before ‘Yellowstone’ and ‘Dune’
Nearly ten years after its theatrical debut, Sicario is having a moment in the Netflix Top 10. Normally most movies that could be described, however tangentially, as political thrillers risk a short shelf life. But with the drugs and the U.S.-Mexico border a regular political talking point every year since the 2016 presidential election that closely followed this movie’s release, the film remains uncomfortably current, despite its Obama-years genesis.
Ten years of distance also highlights the lucky break that Sicario turned out to be one those movies that feels like an all-star production in retrospect, and not just because stars Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, and Benicio del Toro remain cinema fixtures a decade later, or even because supporting players Daniel Kaluuya and Jon Bernthal have since gone on to greater fame. Director Denis Villeneuve made this movie before he became a geek fave with his Blade Runner sequel and Dune movies; cinematographer Roger Deakins shot this just before he finally won a pair of Oscars; and screenwriter Taylor Sheridan has since become a TV impresario with his Yellowstone universe (among other series). It’s the kind of movie that did well enough to inspire a sequel and picked up a couple of Oscar nominations, but now seems like it should have been a bigger hit.
The film itself – a border-set thriller that’s often shot and scored more like a horror picture – follows Kate Macer (Blunt), an FBI agent roped into a task force spearheaded by CIA guy Matt Graver (Brolin) and assisted by a shadowy assassin (Del Toro). She eventually learns that she’s there entirely to address a technicality that disallows the CIA from going solo on operations outside the U.S. Even before that late-movie revelation, though, Kate suspects that she’s not actually been recruited for her law-enforcement expertise, because the operation resists traditional arrests and evidence-gathering at every turn. Graver and his men are there to exert control via chaos, not to actually combat drug abuse.
Kate initially sticks with the group in part because she wants justice for the ghastly scene she comes across at the opening of the film, where a raid on a cartel house in Arizona, seemingly empty but for the dozens of rotting corpses the agents find squirreled away inside the walls. The search is punctuated by an explosive booby trap; though the tone is entirely different, the trappings aren’t too far removed from a Saw movie. Multiple other scenes have horror shadings, from a raid through a cartel tunnel (with night-vision cinematography recalling something like a zombie video game) to Kate’s hook-up with a local cop who turns out to be dirty (shades of a stalker thriller).
This mood comes courtesy of the Oscar-nominated Deakins cinematography (he would finally win his first one for his next Villeneuve film, Blade Runner 2049), which uses a few familiar tones in the depiction of Mexico by outsiders – the cranked white glare, the desert browns – but largely departs from the Traffic orthodoxy established 15 years earlier, namely that the country is yellow-filtered and grainy, with plenty of dust and sunglasses glint. Deakins uses a sharper, starker look for the daylight action scenes, and dusky, shadowy images for the nighttime ones. Notably, yellowish lighting comes into play more in scenes of interrogation, where the “good” guys are pressing captives for information, imposing their will on Mexican people.
It’s hard to say whether Villeneuve and Deakins are consciously critiquing what had, by that point, become condescending visual clichés. Sicario, in general, occupies an uneasy and fascinating space between nasty genre pulp and genuine critique. Is Kate stubbornly naïve about how to address cartel-related cases, or is Matt so smugly convinced of the effectiveness of restoring U.S.-friendlier cartel “order” that he’s indulging a forever war at the behest of the state? Within that ambiguity, there’s more: Is the movie genuinely ambivalent about these issues or noncommittally both-sides-ing to enhance its dark thrills? Whatever balance it strikes, its 2018 sequel Sicario: Day of the Soldado (which loses Blunt, Villenueve, and Deakins, among other vital ingredients) tips further into glorification, seemingly less out of any real political conviction than a misguided desire to go hard as a thriller.
That’s certain what Sicario does, and there’s something pointed and uneasy about the way its climax departs from Kate and Matt entirely, following Del Toro’s assassin on a vengeful mission with a bloody, impossible-to-justify outcome. Though some could probably still read the sequence as acceptable collateral damage, it plays especially scary in the second Trump era, where the twin boogeymen of drugs and immigrants are intertwined in political rhetoric and used to justify, well, just about anything – not policies that are proven to lower crime or help victims of the drug trade, but provide some kind of vengeful release, no matter how ugly. Villeneuve is too clinical to push more emotional buttons, and maybe ultimately too much of a showman to deliver anything more than a visceral chill. But to his credit, he made a crime thriller whose discomfort doesn’t diminish with its rewatchability.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.
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‘Yellowstone’ Creator’s First Film as Screenwriter Lands on Netflix
Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan’s first film as a screenwriter has been released on Netflix.
Sicario, a 2015 thriller directed by Denis Villeneuve, stars Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro, and it arrived on the streaming platform on March 1.
Sheridan—known for creating the popular Yellowstone franchise, including prequels 1883 and 1923—has had a successful career in film and television.
He’s also the brains behind 2024’s Landman, which boasts an A-list cast that includes Demi Moore, Billy Bob Thornton and Jon Hamm. He made his directional debut with 2011’s Vile.
Sicario is Spanish for “hit man,” and the film centers around an FBI agent (Blunt) tasked with combating Mexican drug cartels at the U.S.’s southern border.
Newsweek has contacted Sheridan’s representatives for comment via email.
Producers on the film reportedly wanted Blunt’s character to be played by a man, which del Toro said in a 2015 interview with Vice would have been a “big mistake.”
The actor also said he was “pleasantly surprised” after seeing the final version of the film because he was “very concerned” that it followed the point of view of Blunt’s character before changing perspectives.
“I just didn’t know that was going to work ’cause usually you follow one POV; you stick to it,” he said before praising Villeneuve and others behind the camera for pulling it off. “He dared to do this film, and he did a terrific job.”
On Paramount+, 1923 recently began its second season. The Western follows the Dutton family as they face 20th century challenges, including Prohibition and the Great Depression.
Ahead of its premiere last month, two of the show’s stars, Brian Konowal and Sarah Randall Hunt, spoke with Newsweek and praised Sheridan’s work.
“Fans can expect a very intense season two,” said Konowal, who stars as Clyde. “There will be gut-wrenching highs and lows. Taylor does not pull his punches. I had a lot of ‘I did not see that coming!’ moments when I was reading the scripts. I think fans are going to love the journey.”
Hunt, who plays Ellie Creighton, added, “Taylor is really unpacking some interesting conundrums throughout the series, and the thing is action-packed.”
“Aside from the huge entertainment value, I just love the underlying stories of this series and of 1883,” she continued. “He really gets us thinking about who we are, where we came from, what we have to learn from that, and where we’re going.”
As for whether fans could expect a third season of 1923, Konowal said he could “neither confirm nor deny season two being the last.”
“That’s a question best directed to Taylor, as it’s ultimately his decision,” he said. “But I absolutely love the Yellowstone universe and can’t wait to see what Taylor continues to create within it.”
Hunt echoed a similar sentiment: “I don’t see how you can top the ending for 1923. It is so beautiful. But I’m certain the adventures for the Dutton family are far from over. I can’t wait to see what Mr. Sheridan does next.”
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Megan Cartwright is Newsweek’s Deputy Entertainment Editor, based in London, U.K. Her focus is on U.S. pop culture and entertainment … read more
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