Movie Review: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

Sicario: Day of the Soldado

Director: Stefano Sollima

Starring: Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, Isabela Moner, Catherine Keener, Jeffrey Donovan, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Matthew Modine, Shea Whigham, David Castaneda, Elijah Rodriguez, Howard Ferguson Jr.

Rating: R

Runtime: 122 minutes

Sicario is a movie that I absolutely love and is directed by one of my all-time favorites Denis Villeneuve. Since Prisoners, he’s been a director that consistently surprised and enthralled me with his expression in filmmaking; movies like Arrival, Sicario, and Blade Runner 2049 all ranked in my favorite films of their respective year. So when I heard that Sicario: Day of the Soldado wasn’t going to be directed by Villeneuve but instead Stefano Sollima, I was immediately both disappointed and apprehensive. Often times when a director who succeeded with the first film in a franchise moves away from the project, the sequel suffers greatly as a result (I think most movie buffs agree with this sentiment, but Pacific Rim: Uprising is a great example of this). However, when I learned that Villeneuve had seen the movie and given it his blessing, the excitement and anticipation returned. I found myself sitting eagerly in the theater anticipating my reunion with Benicio del Toro’s masterful performance as Alejandro. And did the sequel deliver?

Sicario: Day of the Soldado delves deeper into a topic that was paramount to the original film’s plot: the Mexican cartel. The U.S. government publicly adds Mexican cartels to the list of foreign terrorist organizations after multiple devastating bombings leave several civilians dead. Josh Brolin’s character Matt Graver returns as the man who is directly assigned to come up with and execute a plan to take out the cartels. For this plan, he recruits Alejandro to his team, and they carry out their mission which includes kidnapping one of the bigger cartel leader’s daughter Isabel Reyes (Isabela Moner).

The plot is pretty straightforward: government team attempts to cause a war between cartels, politics get messy, and through unfortunate circumstances, Alejandro and Reyes are deemed to be terminated. All the while, there is a concurrent plot in the movie that concerns Miguel Hernandez (Elijah Rodriguez), a young kid who gets roped up in cartel business by his cousin. These plots eventually intertwine and create a brutal scene towards the end of the movie.

While the plot isn’t bad by any sense, it’s also not very engaging either and while I felt fully immersed in the first Sicario, in Day of the Soldado I found myself bored for short stretches of the film. On top of this, while none of the acting is bad, and I’d even go as far as to say that del Toro and (in particular) Brolin were good in this, a lot of the characters felt very flat and underdeveloped, and there were multiple relationships established between characters throughout the film that just felt forced together rather than showing the audience any genuine or extensive bonding. Despite the negatives, the movie does have many enjoyable actions scenes, and while there are admittedly some boring moments when the action kicks in everyone in the theater is going along for the ride.

There is, as I mentioned, a brutal scene towards the end concerning a major character, and although I won’t spoil the scene I will say that the emotional weight of the scene would have been stronger had this been the actor’s initial portrayal of the character and not the portrayal we got in this sequel.

All in all, by the time the credits were rolling, while I did enjoy the film I found myself inexplicably disappointing. And to be honest, it’s only because the movie was preceded by something so much better. Villeneuve had set the bar so high for the first film, and for me, while Sollima does do his best to come close ultimately this film is unable to reach that same level. I wouldn’t say that the shortcomings of this film completely detract from the entertainment of the film, but they’re definitely things that keep Day of the Soldado as a “fine movie” and out of the territory of “great movie” that its predecessor achieved.