Vitals

Benicio del Toro as Alejandro Gillick, mysterious government “advisor” and mercenary

Texas border, Summer 2014

Film: Sicario
Release Date: September 18, 2015
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Costume Designer: Renée April

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

I’ve had a few recent requests to cover the outfit that Benicio del Toro wears for his introduction in the 2015 crime thriller Sicario, where his mysterious character Alejandro Gillick joins fellow U.S. Department of Defense special task force operatives Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) and Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) on a joint agency mission flight taking off from Luke Air Force Base to El Paso, though Alejandro reveals to Macer that their eventual destination is just over the border in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.

Alejandro Gillick is introduced as a taciturn loner who “specializes” in dealing with Mexican cartels, but his sleep – even on airplanes – is distributed by trembling and waking in terror. He’s the kind of guy that Macer is given the direction to, “if he says do something, just do it.” Macer eventually gets Alejandro to reveal that he was formerly a prosecutor who worked in Juárez and now currently serves in more of a mercenary capacity, recently called into service from Colombia.

Listen, nothing will make sense to your American ears, and you will doubt everything that we do… but in the end, you will understand.

What’d He Wear?

Alejandro makes his first appearance wearing a beige sport jacket likely made from a summer-weight blend of cotton and silk. The color of the jacket reinforces Alejandro’s ability to blend in with his surroundings, first with the beige interior of the chartered plane and then again against the bland, off-white walls of the government facility where his task force is stationed.

Alejandro’s beige single-breasted sport jacket has narrow notch lapels that roll to a two-button front, though he always wears the front of the jacket open in accordance with his nonchalant approach to dressing. This approach is also apparent with his flaps of his hip pockets that are often half-protruding in or out of the pockets themselves. The jacket also has a welted breast pocket, four-button cuffs, and a single vent.

As the squad prepares for their raid in Juárez, Alejandro carefully removes and folds his jacket to place it in his duffel bag, revealing more of the shirt made by Anto Beverly Hills specifically for del Toro to wear on screen. The dark blue shirt has a slight indigo cast and a sheen in certain lights that indicates a silky, high-twist cotton construction.

The shirt has a soft point collar that he typically wears unbuttoned at the neck, a plain front with mother-of-pearl buttons, and a breast pocket. The cuffs each close with a single button.

A maroon satin silk tie makes Alejandro’s comfortable and sporty summer-friendly outfit a little more businesslike for his plane ride to El Paso and the briefing to follow.

Alejandro wears khaki cotton chinos from Brooks Brothers in a shade just dark enough to provide a necessary contrast when worn with the beige sport jacket.

Alejandro’s khaki chinos have slightly slanted side pockets, jetted back pockets with a button through the left one (no button on the right), and a straight-leg fit with plain-hemmed bottoms. He wears a walnut brown leather belt with debossed black edges and a steel single-prong buckle.

Alejandro wears brown suede boots, each with an inside zipper, made by To Boot New York. As of August 2018, the company no longer offers a side-zip plain-toe boot in this warm shade of medium brown, though their Harrison boot in a cooler shade of brown suede is the next best thing. (For the more tobacco-like suede color worn by Alejandro, you’d have to pick up To Boot New York’s lace-up Boston chukka boot.)

You can see the original costume pieces above – the jacket, shirt, trousers, belt, and boots – at this iCollector listing.

One item not included in the listing are Alejandro’s sporty silver-framed sunglasses with blue arms and brown-tinted prescription lenses. IZOD can clearly be seen in silver lettering at the temples. The specific model of Alejandro’s shades is the now-discontinued IZOD 736.

The rest of Alejandro’s accessories include a gold wedding band on the third finger of his left hand and a yellow gold vintage-looking watch worn on his right wrist with a gold dial and gold bracelet.

Alejandro wears assault gear for much of the latter portion of the film, though his final appearance finds him in what appears to be the same dark blue shirt and khaki pants but with a black linen unstructured sport jacket with smoked mother-of-pearl buttons.

In yet another example of dressing to blend in with his surroundings, Kate doesn’t notice the dark-clad Alejandro hiding in the shadows of her apartment at first.

The Gun

When the task force heads to the border, Alejandro arms himself with a Heckler & Koch MP5A3 submachine gun that he uses ably during a brief battle with cartel gunmen. According to the pros at IMFDB, Alejandro’s suppressed MP5A3 is fitted with railed handguards and an Aimpoint red-dot sight.

Chambered for the universal 9x19mm Parabellum ammunition, the H&K MP5 had been in production for nearly 50 years at the time that Sicario was made. While the more modernized UMP submachine gun has been produced by Heckler & Koch since 1999, the popular and reliable MP5 remains in production and in the armories of military forces and law enforcement agencies in more than 40 countries around the world.

More than 100 different variants of the Heckler & Koch MP5 have been developed in the half-century of the firearm’s existence. The MP5A3 wielded by Alejandro is differentiated by its retractable metal stock and three-position “SEF” trigger group; the three positions are safe (non-firing), semi-automatic, and fully automatic. While the MP5A5 also has a retractable buttstock, it is set to fire three-round bursts.

In some shots, a continuity error exists that places a Heckler & Koch MP5SD3 in Alejandro’s hands. The MP5SD3 has the same retractable stock and SEF trigger group as the MP5A3, but the MP5SD3 has an integral suppressor.