This movie is a constant suspense of 'what the heck is going on and what's going to happen next?'. Emily Blunt's performance is excellent as we take on this ride with her. She is an honest FBI agent who's only done her job to the extent of the law. When she is somewhat taken under the wing of Josh and Benicio's characters, she realizes things operate in a different way when higher government powers, the CIA, get deep into fighting crimes against humanity, or in this case the Mexican drug cartel. The acting is top notch here. As a bit of a non-related spoiler joke to myself, Jon Bernthal has a small role here which of course he nails but I wonder if this got him the job of Netflix's The Punisher. He does such an excellent job of getting beaten up. It was a surprise to see him in this movie. CIA agent Matt Graves (Brolin) plays it neutral here just doing his job but he's like the buffer between the two extremes, Kate (Blunt) and Alejandro (Del Toro). One can really get into character analysis here which is definitely one of the strengths of this movie, next to acting. A few parts dragged just ever so slightly for me but it did not ruin the experience of the movie. I'm glad to have finally watched this since this was in my old-missed list of movies, and to my surprise I hadn't realized there was a part 2 that just came out. I'm looking forward to that one very soon! All in all, I highly recommend this movie if you're okay with some gore scenes. If not, you could always just close your eyes because you could be missing a good movie with great scenes.