Pubdate: Fri, 18 Sep 2015
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Copyright: 2015 Associated Press
Contact: http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/82
Author: Jake Coyle, Associated Press
DEL TORO DIVES BACK INTO DRUG WARS
Veteran Actor in His Element for Thriller 'Sicario'
TORONTO (AP) - No other actor has covered all angles of the war on
drugs - its tragedies, its violence, its farces - more than Benicio Del Toro.
It's a story that has followed the Puerto Ricoborn actor from the
start: One of his first credits was the 1990 NBC miniseries "Drug
Wars: The Camarena Story."
He's played a recovering drug addict ("21 Grams") and one not so
recovering at all ("Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"). He starred as
Pablo Escobar in last year's "Escobar: Paradise Lost." And the
critical pinnacle of his career came in his Oscar-winning performance
as an honest Mexico police officer in Steven Soderbergh's "Traffic."
In Denis Villeneuve's muscular, grim thriller "Sicario" (which opens
in Chicago on Sept. 25), Del Toro finds himself back on the other
side of the border, playing a mysterious mercenary joined with a CIA
task force covertly pursing a Mexican drug lord.
"I don't know how it comes about, but all I can say is I'm an actor
in this time," says Del Toro. "Movies borrow from their times. These
stories are out there in the newspapers."
"Sicario," which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May and had
its North American premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, has already
drawn raves for Del Toro's terse gravitas as a shadowy man known only
as Alejandro. He says little but has a weighty presence.
"Nothing will make sense to your American ears, and you will doubt
everything we do," he warns Emily Blunt's lessexperienced FBI agent.
"I've been in movies where I think it's going to work, and it
doesn't. I've been in movies where I thought it wasn't going to work
and it did," Del Toro said in a recent interview. "And I tell you
this one was one of those that I didn't know."
Villeneuve, the Quebecois director of "Prisoners," was more confident.
"He knows a lot about that world being involved in movies and coming
back with people who were involved in drug wars," says Villeneuve.
"For me, he was a source of information."
Cinematographer Roger Deakins likens the weary-eyed Del Toro to
Robert Mitchum. Villeneuve would often cut Del Toro's dialogue,
stripping the part down as he realized the actor did more with less.
"It was very simple. I just cut 90-95 percent of his dialogue. Most
of the time it was: 'Say nothing. Action!' " says Villeneuve,
chuckling. "He's someone who's very radical about authenticity. When
he doesn't feel something, he cannot act. It has to come from a deep
emotional understanding."
That Del Toro, whose family moved to Pennsylvania when he was 12, has
frequently found - or been found by - drug-war tales is somewhat
surprising to him. But it's an issue he says he feels passionately about.
"I've done my best not to repeat myself," he says. "I've done many
characters that live in that world, the drug wars and the drug world,
but this one had a different angle."
This string of films, from "Traffic" to "Sicario," only makes up a
small part of Del Toro's varied credits. He has played Che Guevara
("Che"), been a regular in the Marvel universe as The Collector and
will always be beloved for his mumbling Fred Fenster in "The Usual
Suspects." He was also recently cast to play the villain in Colin
Trevorrow's "Star Wars: Episode VIII."
"It's a cool part. It's a cool director that I'm really excited to
work with," says Del Toro. "You've got to build it up from zero, the
character. But it's going to be exciting. Hopefully, it will work."
It's not lost on the 48year-old Del Toro, though, that the strife and
pain caused by the war on drugs has now spanned his entire career. He
says the legalization of drugs deserves consideration.
"It's time to evaluate the tactics," he says, noting that Colombia is
now much safer. "It's real scary what's happening in Mexico."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom