Tense, bleak, and nasty, this was a film in which I saw much to admire but ultimately found disappointing and even lazy when I saw it on its initial release. Denis Villeneuve went on to Sicario and other excellent films; revisiting this now, I hoped to see what I'd missed the first time, hoping it cohered more than I remembered and that I could be more in line with the prevailing good opinion of the film.

Much of those things to admire remain, especially Roger Deakins's predictably brilliant cinematography. Shot by a lesser talent, it's probable that the film's atmosphere would be considerably less brooding and uncomfortable. My problem with the central criminal's motivation remains - without descending to spoilers, such situations send at least as many in the opposite direction as they do in the general direction that the villain has gone.

Hugh Jackman's performance doesn't work (it's far from subtle); Gyllenhaal is better, but his tics seem a little corny. There's little to counteract the problem of Sicario, that the central female character is underwritten; here the wives are adjuncts and those who wait for their men to do what men will do. None of this makes the film less atmospheric or detracts from the artistry; it's just that for me it's not quite the film it wants to be or that Sicario and his other later films would turn out to be.