Taylor Sheridan's Brutal Crime Thriller With Emily Blunt Is Taking Over HBO Max A Decade Later

Having created a raft of hugely popular neo-Western series, Taylor Sheridan is Paramount's golden boy. Soon, however, he'll leave Paramount for NBCUniversal following a 2025 deal he struck with the latter. In the meantime, he's currently proving popular over on HBO Max. Sheridan's best movie has just crept onto the film charts and looks set for a modest renaissance more than a decade after its debut.

"Sicario" is easily Sheridan's finest film. Though 2016's "Hell or High Water" is one of the great modern neo-Western movies and his 2017 directorial debut "Wind River" gave us Jeremy Renner at his best, "Sicario" is the movie that introduced Sheridan as a writing powerhouse. Of course, it helped immensely that Denis Villeneuve was directing. The Canadian filmmaker took Sheridan's story of a young female FBI agent forced to push her morals to their limit and delivered a haunting action thriller that lingers in the mind long after viewing. Led by a standout performance from Emily Blunt, the movie remains one of the best of the 2010s, which is why it's not at all surprising to see it garnering attention over on HBO Max.

As per viewership tracker FlixPatrol, "Sicario" is triumphing on the streamer's charts in the United States. The movie hit the service on August 1, 2026, and debuted at number nine on the movies chart on August 5. No doubt it will climb higher as the week goes on, which is a good thing, as those familiar only with Sheridan's soapy TV melodramas will get a chance to see how adept the prolific writer is at writing more grounded crime thriller fare.

Taylor Sheridan's shows have given the man himself a reputation as a purveyor of soap-opera nonsense wrapped in a premium drama sheen. But not only are many of his series genuinely good, but he's also proved his worth as a serious scenarist with projects like "Sicario."

The film follows Emily Blunt's FBI special agent Kate Macer, who, after executing a raid on a Sonoran Cartel safe house, finds herself swept up by a joint task force led by Josh Brolin's CIA SAC officer Matt Graver. Alongside Benicio del Toro's secretive assassin Alejandro Gillick, Macer is tasked with capturing Sonoran lieutenant Manuel Diaz. But as the mission goes on, Blunt's agent discovers there's more to her mission than Graver initially let on, and as she's pulled deeper into his machinations, her ethics are tested in a way that forces her to question everything.

This movie really is top-notch in pretty much every way. From Sheridan's writing and Villeneuve's direction to the performances, "Sicario" delivers on every front. What's more, the film sees its writer probe deeper concepts than fans of, say, "Tulsa King" might be used to. Though the film is ostensibly a thriller set amid the dangerous world of the drug trade, according to Sheridan, the real theme of "Sicario" is the rule of law and who abides by it. Indeed, like Graver with Macer herself, the film pushes us to really consider whether the ends justify the means, making for a gripping ride throughout. No wonder the film is still capable of capturing audiences 11 years after its release.