**** outta *****

4 outta 5

The 2015 drug smuggling thriller Sicario doesn’t lend itself to a sequel as the film itself is rather close ended.  But here is one anyway with Sicario: Day of the Soldado.  The original Sicario had a surprisingly awesome behind the camera talent Director Denis Villeneuve and Cinematographer Roger Deakins that gave sweeping scope to a gritty crime drama.  New series Director Stefano Sollima manages to make this movie look almost if not quite as visually lush as the first film.  While this script doesn’t have the clockwork precision that made the first film so taut, this still has cool action scenes and dramatic beats.  If it doesn’t match the original it is definitely a solid, gritty and messy return to this world.

When there is a terrorist attack at the US / Mexico border, the US Government led by the Secretary of Defence (Matthew Modine) tasks CIA agent Matt (Josh Brolin) to cause chaos in Mexican drug cartels who are smuggling people across the border.  Matt enlists his old friend, the lawyer turned assassin Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro) and they kidnap Isabel (Isabella Moner), the daughter of a Mexican cartel king.  Their boss, Cynthia (Catherine Keener), wants the job done quickly and quietly but soon bullets, RPGS, and bodies start flying and Alejandro ends up with Isabel looking for safety.  But when dealing with heavily armed drug cartels, there is no safety to be had.  

In the first film, Emily Blunt played the outsider who saw the horrible tricks that Matt and Alejandro pulled, giving the film a moral compass.  In Soldado that moral compass is tossed aside since Blunt’s character doesn’t return (her character was likely so traumatized she’s probably selling lemonade somewhere).  It makes this movie darker than the first but less dramatic because there’s no one to point out the character’s lawlessness. They’re not antagonists now instead this makes them heroes.  It is a bit of an awkward fit but both Brolin and Del Toro make for compelling morally murky leads.   

Josh Brolin is having a banner last few months with Avengers Infinity War, Deadpool 2 and now this movie.  His first scene in Soldado involves him doing nasty stuff to get information and he has a nice determination throughout.  Moner has a fantastic introductory sequence where she’s in a brawl at her high school and gets snarky with the principal.  Afterwards she is mostly a plot piece who gets kidnapped, screamed and moved around but her reactions are pretty good.

The movie almost gives Isabel and Alejandro a father/daughter relationship but it’s hard to accept since we’ve seen Alejandro’s icy brutality, especially in the fist film.  Soldado softens Alejandro’s rough edges but he’s mostly still a stoic badass.  In one of the movie’s cooler moments in a single continuous shot he’s driving and a car pulls up beside him spraying bullets and he does a no-look grenade toss into their car. Modine and Keener are basically there just for exposition but they add some flair to their one note boss characters. 

There is an interesting line when Matt says the drug cartels are actually making more money smuggling people instead of drugs across the border.  The migrants themselves are just bodies that need to be moved.  At one point a character calls them “sheep” and they even leave a woman behind who is floating away while crossing a river.  The real nastiness occurs when the cartels engage in deadly enforcement of their rules. 

There is a subplot involving young American Miguel (Elijah Rodriguez) who takes up the job of running migrants as his seemingly easy gig eventually involves blood and death.  Simple corruption of innocence stuff but there are some great bits like when Miguel first smuggles a crew across and he’s picked up by a suburban mom in a van with her baby who is making easy money bringing him back home.  The fact the mom is smiling and handing over wads of cash shows how pervasive and across racial and cultural lines cartel corruption goes. 

Action in this film is pretty superb.  The opening scene of terror attacks is jaw dropping as terrorists walk into a supermarket and start blowing up.  A shoot out on a dusty road has a nice slow burn of building tension. Alejandro takes out a cartel lawyer just so they can follow corrupt officials afterwards and it’s cool to see their plan come together. Even as the US agents are mowing down cartel members in the name of the law it’s disturbing because they’re so casual in dealing out death.  Sometimes the movie wants to have it both ways with brutal, realistic violence but still keep the characters alive. So it creates a bit of a weird disconnect between an invincible action hero who can keep on ticking and gritty drama with high stakes.  

Maybe Sicario is not the best fit for an ongoing action franchise, it’s a tad too grim for that, but this does actually work for a look at the blood spilled at the US/Mexico border.  Sicario: Day of the Soldado is visually lush and has solid performances as Alejandro and Matt’s scheme unfolds into a cavalcade of dusty chaos.  They’re doing necessary dirty work and it only cost them their souls.