El Sicario, Room 164: A Mexican Assassin Tells All

21 One Prods

The assassin sketches a hit.

Location Info

Map

Northwest Film Forum

1515 12th Ave.
Seattle, WA 98122

Category: Movie Theaters

Region: Capitol Hill

Photos

1 user reviews	Write A Review
Save to foursquare	0

Details

Runs at Northwest Film Forum, Fri., Jan. 13–Thurs., Jan. 19. Not rated. 84 minutes.

Related Content

• One Nation, Under Tacos
  April 4, 2012
• Whose Shoes? A Grillaxin Special
  April 12, 2011
• Gold Leaves: Rich & Rare
  August 10, 2011
• City Arts Fest 2011: Now This Feels Like a Festival
  October 21, 2011
• Ask a Mexican!
  August 24, 2011

More About

• Gianfranco Rosi
• Ciudad Juarez
• Sharpie Permanent Markers
• Chihuahua State Police

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

The subject of Gianfranco Rosi's documentary portrait is a former resident of Ciudad Juárez, a Mexican city where, according to the closing titles, 5,000 people have been murdered since 2008. It's here that our anonymous subject worked under the drug cartels for 20 years, at one point simultaneously employed as an officer of the Chihuahua State Police and as a professional assassin, a double life that is, to hear him tell it, by no means unusual. El Sicario is shot almost entirely inside a nondescript motel room, number 164. ("Sicario," incidentally, is slang for a professional killer.) Wearing a black cowl concealing his face, the subject gives a guided tour of his life, from his induction into "narcotrafficking" as a teenager through his cartel-sponsored trip to the police academy ("used by the narcos as training grounds") and his long subsequent career as a hired killer. He compulsively illustrates his life story with a brown Sharpie and a bound notebook and lucidly outlines the ins and outs of trafficking and endemic, system-wide corruption in doodles and abstract diagrams. The sparse, almost banal presentation here is a virtue, for to boldface the horrors under discussion would only trivialize or sensationalize them. Hoping for his own salvation, the converted killer now claims the scales have fallen from his eyes, but his executioner's hood remains in place to the end—as does the mephitic air of timeless evil that hangs over El Sicario.