Review of Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018) by Gerardistheway — 12 Jul 2018

An enjoyable ride in its own right, but by no means of the same caliber as the original "Sicario". I had high hopes for this movie, and while it succeeded in some areas I was sorely disappointed in others.

The acting (particularly Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin, but especially so with Brolin in my opinion) is still superb, the direction (despite missing Denis Villeneuve's magic touch) is crisp, and the film is still great to look at even without Roger Deakins, crisply filmed with exciting, harrowing action sequences and plenty of beautiful Mexican landscapes and grimy, crime-riddled cities to take in. I also liked the development that Brolin's Matt and Del Toro's Alejandro go through within the movie: seeing the former wrestle with following orders he doesn't believe in lends him some extra depth and the latter's bonding with a teenage girl (Isabela Moner) wrapped up in their plot to initiate war between the cartels some much-needed humanity. The story, however, tries to do too much and becomes a muddled mess because of it, with plot points raised and either never resolved or only mentioned again once or twice, and some of them defying common logic (what exactly would drug cartels gain from smuggling Islamic terrorists into the US?). Whether this is writer Taylor Sheridan's or editor Matthew Goodman's fault I don't know, but within this movie there are at least two or three stories that would have been solid movies on their own had they been developed enough to actually provide some substantial payoff. Alas, they weren't, and here we are. There are also some of you out there who, if you took issue with the decidedly negative portrayal of Mexican characters in the first film, will have a field day with this one: almost every Latino character outside of the main cast is either an illegal migrant or a criminal, while Muslims get payed the lip treatment as being portrayed purely as suicide bombers for the umpteenth time. To take such a complicated issue as crime at the border and boil it down to merely "bad vs. worse" provides a fairly reductive view of said issues, and threatens to reinforce some of the toxic beliefs still held in our day and age.

I'm not recommending that you don't see "Day of the Soldado". Considering the sheer amount of testosterone and the often grim tone that it takes, "entertaining" may not be the right word, but the movie certainly had my attention (at least at first) while watching. For those of you going in expecting a worthy successor to the brilliant original, though, I would advise caution: you may find it more of a set-up for the third movie than an actual film in its own right.