The best action stars lately have been women. I'm looking at you, Charlize Theron, and you, Michelle Rodriguez, and yes, even you, Melissa McCarthy. Most of all, I'm looking at YOU, GIRL, Emily Blunt. Blunt—whose rise to fame was The Devil Wears Prada as the bitchy, Valentino-clad assistant—could have easily fallen into one of those period piece heroine pigeonholes. But under our very noses, this dark horse rose up as Emily Blunt, Action Star, thanks to the surprisingly excellent Edge of Tomorrow (2014), and Looper just a couple years before that. She's set to climb that ladder even further up this fall with Sicario, a new Cannes standout in which she plays an FBI agent caught up in a dangerous drug war at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Sicario comes from director Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Enemy) and features Josh Brolin, Benicio Del Toro, Jon Bernthal, and Victor Garber alongside the stellar Blunt. The new trailer just dropped, which you can watch above. It looks insane. It looks like what I want True Detective to be. Emily Blunt has a very unsure "I'm not a soldier, this is not what I do" moment but you KNOW she's going to strap up and slay. All while serving really good "don't fuck with me" face.
In light of the disappointing casting news that Emily Blunt will play the lead in the adaptation of Paula Hawkins' The Girl on the Train (a VERY basic book that was mostly a waste of my time), here's hoping she'll do enough ass-kicking in Sicario to make up for that sad excuse of a thriller.
