10 Movies Everyone Thinks Are Based On A True Story (But Aren't)

Denis Villeneuve's Sicario is such a gritty, grounded piece of work you can practically taste the dust of the El Paso-Juárez border.

It provides such an immersive window into the world of Mexican drug cartels and the FBI task force primed with taking them down, that many assumed it was adapted from a non-fiction novel or newspaper article about life on the border.

But Sicario is a purely original script from actor-turned-writer Taylor Sheridan - his first ever screenplay, in fact, and one which netted him a Writers Guild of America nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

While the characters and precise story are conjured out of thin air, this isn't to say that the broad details of the world therein aren't accurate.

Cartel violence continues to be rife on the border, and so as star Josh Brolin perhaps best put it, "Sicario is a fictional account about something that's happening right now."

Yet the authority of Sheridan's script and Villeneuve's impossibly taut direction make it so easy to accept the film as based directly on real people and their experiences.