SICARIO 2 DAY OF THE SOLDADO – Review

Benicio Del Toro stars in SICARIO: DAY OF THE SOLDADO. Photo By: Richard Foreman, Jr. Copyright: © 2018 CTMG, Inc. All Rights Reserved. **ALL IMAGES ARE PROPERTY OF SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT INC. FOR PROMOTIONAL USE ONLY. SALE, DUPLICATION OR TRANSFER OF THIS MATERIAL IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED.

“Sicario” means a hitman in Mexico, and the U.S.-Mexico border is the setting for the violent thriller SICARIO 2 DAY OF THE SOLDADO. In the original 2015 film SICARIO, a local policewoman played by Emily Blunt teams with a federal agent (Josh Brolin) and his hired Mexican hitman (Benicio Del Toro) to assassinate a Mexican drug lord, in an effort to gain control of the cartels. In SICARIO 2 DAY OF THE SOLDADO, the federal government is worried that drug cartels’ new lucrative business, trafficking people illegally over the U.S.- Mexico border, now includes terrorists and Brolin and Del Toro take on a new mission to disrupt that trade by starting a war between the cartels.

Like most sequels, DAY OF THE SOLDADO is not nearly as good as the original, although it is still better than many other action thrillers out there. To its credit, one does not have to have seen the first one to follow the story, and the sequel does retain some creative elements from the first one, not just Brolin and Del Toro in the cast but scriptwriter Taylor Sheridan. However, while the first film was dark, it balanced its bleak amoral aspects with Blunt’s morally upright character. The sequel is much darker and unrelentingly so, with little to no light and dark moral balance.

In the sequel, evidence that links a terrorist bombing with a Muslim extremist who crossed the Mexico – U.S. border sparks alarm in Homeland Security, which turns to the CIA for help. Noting that the Mexican drug cartels have taken over human trafficking over the border, CIA agent Matt Graver (Brolin) recommends a mission to start a war between drug lords to disrupt the trafficking. Homeland Security’s (Catherine Keener) is assigned to oversee the joint mission with Graver and Alejandro (Del Toro), a one-time Mexican lawyer turned hitman after a drug lord killed his family. The plan is to kidnap the 16-year-old daughter (Isabela Moner) of a drug kingpin and pin the blame on another drug lord.

The original SICARIO had some heavy hitters involved, and not just in the cast. That film was directed by Denis Villeneuve, who also helmed BLADE RUNNER 2049 and ARRIVAL, and it featured cinematography by the great Roger Deakins, who shot numerous Cohen brothers films as well as BLADE RUNNER 2049. It starred Blunt as an idealistic policewoman, along with her partner, played by GET OUT’s Daniel Kaluuya, assigned to partner with the CIA’s Brolin and Del Toro. The script was by Taylor Sheridan, who was nominated for an Oscar for HELL OR HIGH WATER, and had a strikingly eerie score by the late Johann Johannsson (ARRIVAL, PRISONERS, THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING).

The sequel retains some elements of SICARIO. Brolin and Del Toro return as the same characters but not Blunt or Kaluuya. Director Villeneuve is replaced by Stefano Sollima. Deakins is gone too, replaced by cinematographer Dariusz Wolski. But scriptwriter Taylor Sheridan returns and some of Johannsson’s unsettling but effective, percussive music is included in the score by Hildur Gudnadottir.

The film is relentlessly dark, much more so than the first one, and the plot does not work out as neatly as in the first one. The original SICARIO have a dark and light moral contrast that this one lacks. Director Sollima does a serviceable job of creating suspense, and even terror, in this bloody thriller. But the lack of something to balance the amoral characters makes the story feel unbalanced. Actually there is some attempt to create that contrast, with some supporting characters – the kidnapped girl, a boy in Texas being recruited as a coyote, a deaf Mexican family man, and even twinges of conscience from both Brolin’s and Del Toro’s characters, with references to the hitman’s tragic past. But the lack of a strong counterbalancing character, like Emily Blunt played in the original, is felt sharply. The cast does have one major woman character, played by Catherine Keener, but she is in the same amoral vein as the other characters, and even more so. Isabela Moner, as the kidnapped girl, understandably spends most of her time just terrified.

To its credit, DAY OF THE SOLDADO does not try to repeat the first film as so many sequels do. It is its own story. Besides Brolin, Del Toro and Keener in lead roles, the sequel’s other strength is writer Sheridan. But even his script has some problems. The mission does not work out as cleanly as in the first one, which is OK, but not all that happens makes sense and the characters do not always act in a way that is internally consistent. The action is good if very violent, and the story and pacing are edge-of-your-seat suspenseful, but the ending is not very satisfying and the last scene seems a bit tacked on, mostly there to set up another film.

SICARIO 2 DAY OF THE SOLDADO is a good if dark, brutal action thriller set in the violent world of drug cartels and paramilitary missions but it is nowhere near as good as the first one. Hopefully, the next one will bring back some of the light and dark contrast of the first one, maybe even Emily Blunt’s character, as a counterweight to all the collateral damage.

RATING: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars