Sicario sequel missing raw energy
Day of the Soldado has star power, but lacks other important essentials
In 2015, Denis Villeneuve made Sicario, a dark, disturbing, deliriously good drama about the drug trade and a U.S. military incursion into Mexico. The sequel, Day of the Soldado, doubles down on the darkness and manages to be almost as disturbing.
Quality-wise, it’s — well, it’s decent. But it’s hard to imagine as perfect a picture when you consider how many pieces are missing from the original. Villeneuve, too busy on Blade Runner
2049 to take on this project, has been replaced with Italian director Stefano Sollima.
The original’s team of Oscarnominated cinematographer, composer and editor are gone, too. At times one senses their replacements trying to live up to the first movie’s stark visuals and dark score, but it comes across as a pale imitation, with too many eye-in-the-sky shots.
And there’s no Emily Blunt, the FBI cop who gets caught up in the action and serves the vital role of the audience’s proxy in this confusing world.
So who’s left?
Josh Brolin returns as Matt Graver, a sandals-wearing government operative of shadowy provenance but considerable providence. When the feds detect a link (dubious, but plausible) between Mexican drug cartels, human trafficking and terrorism on U.S. soil, they call Matt to shake things up. He in turn recruits Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro) to help start a war between rival cartels and then fight on both sides.
Brolin’s character isn’t so much immoral as amoral, doing whatever it takes to get the job done. He’d be a minor villainous functionary in most movies, but in this one, with Catherine Keener as a defence bigwig delivering demands from an offscreen, unnamed U.S. president, he’s driving the plot.
And he’s not just machiavellian; he’s a machiavaledictorian, doling out his evil deeds with dark, sometimes self-effacing humour. When someone suggests stitches for a gunshot wound, he brushes off the offer and drawls: “Lucky for me I’ll still need ’em tomorrow.”
Lines like that — and my favourite, “Waterboarding is for when we CAN’T torture” — come from Taylor Sheridan (Hell or High Water), the screenwriter who is the strongest link between Day of the Soldado (the Spanish word for soldier) and the original Sicario, which means hit man. Sheridan’s script also gives us a U.S. government operative defining terrorism as “any individual or group that uses violence to achieve a political goal,” leaving the audience to piece together that this is exactly what said government is doing in this film.
Matt’s false-flag plan is to “capture a princess,” so he arranges for the kidnapping of 16-yearold Isabel Reyes, played by a tough-as-nails Isabela Moner, whom I can’t wait to see take on the title role in next year’s Dora the Explorer big-screen outing. Her character is the daughter of the drug lord who once ordered the death of Alejandro’s own daughter, so expect some moral ambiguity when he’s the one who winds up protecting her.
The expectation is that the cartels will tear themselves apart in the aftermath of the abduction, but of course things don’t go as expected, leaving Matt and Alejandro further exposed and farther from help as the story unravels. In addition to the kidnap victim, the screenplay introduces another youngster (Elijah Rodriguez) being groomed for a role in human trafficking. It’s easy to see where his path will eventually cross that of Matt’s team, and also to imagine a role for him in the planned third part of the Sicario trilogy.
But politics moves faster than movies these days. When Sicario premièred at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2015, we were still 18 months away from the election of reality-star President Donald Trump. His administration now stands accused of openly kidnapping Mexican children, making Soldado play like more of an alternate-reality fiction than a serious take on U.S. foreign policy. No telling where we’ll be in 2021. It could be the world of Johnny Mnemonic, for all I know.
Day of the Soldado is still an intriguing thriller, but it’s missing the raw energy of the previous instalment. What pep it has comes from the acting chops of the two leads, light-years away from their roles in Infinity War. That and the lingering goodwill from the first movie are just enough to tip this one into the “worthwhile” column. One final recommendation: You don’t have to have seen the first one, but if you haven’t — do.