Director: Stefano Sollima
Writer: Taylor Sheridan
Runtime: 2 hours, 3 minutes (123 minutes)
MPAA Rating: R (strong violence, bloody images, and language)
Sicario: Day of the Soldado (or Sicario 2: Soldado as it’s known internationally) was a movie that a lot of people were incredibly concerned about. The original Sicario directed by acclaimed filmmaker Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Enemy, Arrival, Blade Runner 2049) was a tense thriller about police militarization and border control between America and Mexico, a hot topic that’s relevant more than ever now.
Day of the Soldado is a sequel but a less traditional one. It’s a sequel in the sense that there are returning characters and it follows the events of the first Sicario but you could go into this movie blind and follow the movie perfectly fine. The events of the first film are more or less unconnected and the story-heavy character that was Kate (Emily Blunt) isn’t featured or mentioned in the film.
Many were worried that Blunt and Villeneuve became uninvolved with the film because it was more of a cash grab by the studio to capitalize on the Sicario “brand” and less about a story of political intrigue. Do not be mistaken, though. Although the film’s marketing leans heavily on its action, the heart and core of what made Sicario so good are still here but with some caveats.
Sicario: Day of the Soldado kicks off with an incredibly grim and disturbing opening that features America under attack by terrorists. Wheels begin to turn and the government realizes these terrorists are boarding ships to Mexico and sneaking in through the border instead of boarding a plane and the cartel are the ones assisting in their entry to the land of the free.
The government brings in Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) to begin a civil war in Mexico amongst rival gangs to disrupt the terrorist trafficking scheme by any means necessary. With full control over the operation, Graver once again recruits assassin and grieving father Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro) to help him carry out a dirty plot to ignite the fire in the crime world.
Without saying too much more, Graver’s team kidnap one of the drug lords’ kids and frame a rival cartel. With the fire lit, Graver and Gillick use the child as a pawn in their plot to tear apart the cartels but things get crazy really fast.
This story is a complex one with other side plots with seemingly unrelated characters being woven into the main plot in clever ways. It brings an escalation of stakes and ultimately plucks Blunt’s character out of the movie to put you, the viewer, in her role. Who can be trusted? How far is too far? These questions and many more were rattling around in my brain throughout the two hours I sat watching it.
At times, it became a bit hard to follow what characters were where and what they were doing as the story unravels very quickly. It has decent pacing but there were times where I found myself asking “Wait, why are they going there or doing that?”
The story juggles a lot of various plot points simultaneously and some of it can get a bit blurred to the point where it’s hard to process what’s going on at the moment but you can still grasp the gist of the situation on screen. Perhaps Blunt’s character was integral to maintaining a sense of narrative order in all the chaos but those moments of disorientation are few and far between.
This political thriller trusts the audience to make their own minds up on the moral ambiguity of the film. It shows you some of the most real, disturbing stuff I’ve seen in a movie and then says to you “Now, we’re going to try and resolve all of this.”
The best analogy would be when someone is pouring you a drink and they tell you to tell them when to stop filling your glass, only in Sicario: Day of the Soldado you can’t say a peep about when to stop and the glass eventually overflows. They go to the extreme and want to make you realize some of this stuff is happening in real life, this is not a summer movie made for escaping reality. This is a summer movie made for reminding you that reality is FUBAR (Google it if you don’t know what it means), it has a point to make.
Day of the Soldado builds off of the message of the first movie by introducing children as key players in this story, putting them in the most awful circumstances and catching them up in places no one should be in. They’re casualties and pawns in political manipulation, horrific crime organizations, and more.
With this, we see our “heroes” struggling with their morals, Alejandro Gillick really develops further. The first film just gave us a small taste of who he was beyond the relentless hired gun but this one dives deeper but it’s done with subtlety. It’s not the foundation of this story but it’s an important pillar of it. Gillick’s fatherhood instincts sit in the back of his head throughout the film, sometimes jumping to the front. He has empathy for other people and takes it upon himself to protect the girl who serves almost as a surrogate daughter after his last one was killed by the cartel.
It doesn’t let the grounded yet gripping, excellent action sequences detract from building an equally good story as the first film while building on the mysterious and shady government figures we met in the original.
While the first Sicario had action, it was sparse and controlled. Gunfights were brief and more grounded than expected, this one amps it up pretty significantly and throws us in the deep end. The tense convoy scene from the first movie which features Graver and his crew trying to get a high-value target back across the border to America while stuck in traffic is executed again in a different way, creating higher stakes, a deadlier battle, and much more.
The violence is far more brutal and feels more intimate all to perturb you. While there are moments that have riveting moments, there are other moments that would feel wrong to cheer or root for. The camera stays very close to the action, putting you in claustrophobic scenarios such as an ambushed humvee pinned down by high-caliber LMGs, RPGs, and lots of enemy fighters on all sides of the vehicle. It’s the kind of action that makes your palms sweat, your heart race, and your muscles lock up.
Despite this, it still manages to translate the message of the story into these set pieces, never losing sight of writer Tyler Sheridan’s goal. It’s not trying to entertain as much as it is trying to show fearful encounters that convey a sense of barbaric savagery.
Despite its insistence to maintain its tone and realism, the film does eventually begin to go into territory which is nothing short of ridiculous. It’s not bad or anything but it takes a turn towards the end where it just has a jarring shift into something that feels like the remaining consistency of tone and groundedness left after the scale of the film was increased was kicked to the curb.
Thankfully, it happens so late in the movie that it has already earned your trust and the credits are close to rolling so you can probably forgive it. The movie does end on a note that is pretty blatant sequel bait and also came off as something that you’d see at the end of a Marvel film or something. It left me wondering if this was something added by the studio or the director given Taylor Sheridan is usual more contained in his writing.
The only other place Day of the Soldado suffers is in its visuals. Again, these aren’t bad but they’re very cookie-cutter and lack the style that Roger Deakins brought in the first film. They seemed to want to try and adapt their own feel but it fails to make a lasting impression like the original film’s washed out, yellow/brownish bleak look. There’s some good camera work in the action sequences as previously mentioned but outside of that, it had me missing Deakins’ signature eye for good cinematography.
The Verdict:
Sicario: Day of the Soldado is a sequel that is pulled off with great competence but maybe lacks the pizzaz of the original in some ways. The story is bigger, more complicated, and is crafted with incredible care to push the themes and characters of the original further. It’s hard to say Soldado is a letdown because it’s simply not, there were moments where I was totally and completely mesmerized by what was happening on screen and moments where I found myself sinking into my seat with dread.
If you’re a fan of the first film, you’ll probably enjoy Day of the Soldado even though it’s likely not everyone will value it the same way. The plot can be a bit dizzying at times and the cinematography is missing the visual flair of the first film but overall, it’s an incredibly well-made nail-biting political thriller that justifies its existence to a film that didn’t need a sequel in the first place.
NOTE: We’re trying something new here. We’ve reviewed films in the past but primarily kept it locked to superhero films, sci-fi, or movies in popular franchises. Sicario: Day of the Soldado had some interest from our readers when I polled my Twitter followers so we’re going to be trying to expand more into doing film reviews when there’s something of this scale that’s relevant and interesting to our audience.
You won’t be seeing us review arthouse films, rom-coms, musicals, or anything of that nature but when something like this film comes out we may review it. The primary focus of GameZone will still be video games as always, nothing is changing and this film approach won’t be a major new addition. It’s simply giving you more variety in the content we give you.
This is just an experiment to gauge interest at the moment so please give us feedback on Twitter (@GameZoneOnline), our Facebook page, and our own comments below. If you like it, hate it, etc, we’re listening and we’ll evaluate this approach depending on what you want to see.
