‘Sicario’ sequel lacks ambition of the original
“Sicario” was a terrific movie, a blistering, unforgiving look at the drug trade, cartels and the lengths, legal and otherwise, U.S. authorities will go to fight back.
It was not the kind of movie that begged for a sequel, but one has arrived: “Sicario: Day of the Soldado.” It’s certainly a good movie, though not a great one, or even a near-great one, like the original. It’s lacking three crucial ingredients: Denis Villeneuve’s direction, Emily Blunt’s presence and Benicio Del Toro’s silence.
Oh, Del Toro talked in the first film. Just not much; his quiet menace was one of the best things about the movie.
He was great. He’s back as Alejandro, the mysterious killer who simply went about his grisly business, with little regard for decorum or legality, fueled by a thirst for revenge. Also back is Josh Brolin as Matt Graver, the flip-flop wearing
shadowy operative for an equally shadowy U.S. agency. The government, represented by Catherine Keener as a rather heartless supervisor, is worried that cartels are now sneaking terrorists across the border with Mexico.
She calls in Graver to put a stop to it. Naturally, she’s not interested in how. The ends have always justified the means for this bunch. At one point Graver, in recruiting Alejandro for the mission, which involves trying to turn competing cartels on each other, says “No rules this time.”
I don’t recall an overabundance of rules the last time.
That line, by the way, is a groaner, one of a couple provided by the usually outstanding Taylor Sheridan, who returns as screenwriter. Brolin is tasked with delivering most of the cliches, such as, “If you want to see this thing through, I’m going to have to get ... dirty.”
Sheridan redeems it somewhat with the response from oily Secretary of Defense James Ridley (Matthew Modine, always welcome): “Dirty is exactly why you’re here.”
No kidding. In the first film, Blunt’s FBI agent served as both an audience surrogate and a conscience. She was willing to bend rules to bring down the cartel, but not blast them to bits with an automatic weapon. Hers was the voice of relative reason, and it’s missing here. Graver proves up front that he’s as good as his word when it comes to playing dirty, making a bold and floridly illegal move to try to set the cartel war in motion.
Things go sour, of course — when everyone’s at least partially a bad guy, things are going to get ugly. They do, though director Stefano Sollima (whose resume includes the excellent TV series “Gomorrah”) doesn’t have the visual flair Villeneuve brought to the first film. (Brilliant cinematographer Roger Deakins isn’t around for the sequel, which has a lot to do with that.) That becomes clear in another high-energy battle. Sollima’s version is much more straightforward. Villeneuve’s was almost exquisite, thrilling torture.
Sollima’s direction suits this version of the story. “Sicario: Day of the Soldado” is less a political film and much more a straightforward action movie. The adrenaline is undeniable, and even when things get a little sketchy, there’s always Del Toro.
He’s still great, an audience magnet. And just when you wish he was in every scene, in the second half of the film he winds up in almost every scene, and you realize, hmm, maybe a little absence would make the heart grow fonder. In the first film all he had to do was stand there and smile with his tired eyes — it was terrifying. Now he explains himself a lot more, and while it ostensibly reveals more about his character, it removes a lot of the mystery that was so crucial to the original film’s success.
“Sicario: Day of the Soldado” is exciting, and still delivers nihilistic thrills. But this time around, the filmmakers are satisfied with that and not much more.