MEXICAN WAVE of TERROR
Sicario 2 is a white-knuckle ride from start to finish...
Sicario: Day Of The Soldado (15) Verdict: Cartel crime thriller Tag (15) Verdict: Man-boy comedy
Full of hard men and military hardware, Sicario: Day Of The Soldado is explosive, with a propulsive plot. But the thriller also throws a stroppy schoolgirl into the criminal mix, with surprising consequences.
This sequel to Sicario is set among the drug cartels on the Mexico-u.S. border, and once again stars Josh Brolin as a CIA black ops agent, and Benicio Del Toro as his co-conspirator in Mexico.
The two gents just ooze testosterone beneath their black bullet-proof vests.
When the cartels expand their business from smuggling drugs to trafficking people and terrorist bombs, Matt Graver (Brolin) and Alejandro Gillick (Del Toro) are sent to do some dirty work by the u.S. Government — which of course will deny everything publicly.
One of the most shocking scenes in the always-violent film is a multiple explosion in a Kansas City supermarket, as a mother and her young daughter stand a few feet away from an IS suicide bomber.
After this, Graver follows the trail of the bombers back to Somalia and over to Mexico, threatening torture and waterboarding along the way. ‘This is Africa. I can do what the f*** I want here,’ says Graver, ordering a drone strike on an unfortunate man’s relatives.
The CIA black ops job is to end the bomb trafficking by starting a distracting war between two Mexican cartels ‘kidnapping a prince’, who in this case turns out to be a rich princess, Isabel Reyes (Isabela Moner), the teenage daughter of the cartel leader.
Moner is full of oomph, first seen in her grey school tunic giving a good pasting to a girl who has teased her in the playground, a portent of trouble to come.
All this is only the start of a film which twists and turns constantly, requiring steady concentration as scenes and bodies pile up. Written by Taylor Sheridan, who created the Oscar-nominated Hell Or High Water, the thriller occasionally slides into Western territory, with its gunslingers crossing and re-crossing the desert frontier.
Oscar-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins is behind the camera, and his aerial filming of a convoy of armoured cars racing through the dust is filled with suspense and doom, heightened by thrumming bass and drums on the soundtrack.
Brolin and Del Toro are in their element: at once cool, world weary and incredibly slick, while those around them lose their heads, often literally.
The savagery is continual, fuelled by rocket-propelled grenades, armoured personnel carriers, military helicopters, and snub-nosed machine guns. What is disturbing is seeing Isabel, who looks about 14, watching the violence.
She is a pawn in the men’s ruthless game. When she’s splattered with blood and rattled by bullets, no one else seems in the least bit bothered. AT ONE point, Isabel is almost separated from Alejandro as he tries to sneak her across the border, and the sight of children and parents crouching terrified in the dark to await the human traffickers at the Mexican border has disturbing resonances with recent news.
Another teenager pops up in the chaos: Miguel Hernandez (Elijah Rodriguez) a Mexican with a u.S. passport who works for a gang of human traffickers.
The original Sicario in 2015 starred Emily Blunt as an FBI agent, who struggled and overcame the challenges of the machismo all around her.
This time, though, Blunt is missing and the whole film is more of a blunt instrument without her: carnage follows carnage but the emotional core seems oddly empty. n
PERHAPS what’s most hilarious about ensemble comedy Tag is that it’s based on a real-life game that a group of not-entirely-mature men have been playing for almost 30 years, since they left high school.
Every year, in May, the old school friends go anywhere, and to any lengths, to tag one of their buddies in an everlasting and delightfully stupid game of chase across the United States.
Whoever is ‘It’ at the end of the month has to wait until next year for revenge.
In the fun movie version, Jeremy Renner (Jerry), Jon Hamm (Callahan), Ed Helms (Hoagie), Jake Johnson (Chilli) and Hannibal Buress (Sable) play boys who never grew up.
One minute Callahan is a suited Mad Men-style CEO giving an interview to the Wall Street Journal, and the next he’s laughing like a drain, trying to toss chairs through plate-glass windows to pursue Hoagie. There’s a joyous innocence to the slapstick efforts of the four losers to catch Jerry, a cocky fitness instructor who has never been tagged.
They arrive uninvited for Jerry’s wedding — and his Alcoholics Anonymous meeting — in Spokane, Washington. They’re followed by the Wall Street Journal reporter (Annabelle Wallis) and Isla Fisher as Hoagie’s ultracompetitive wife.
This one-note film is as fluffy as one lad’s old teddy bear, who nearly comes to a tragic end. But when the script tries to get serious, the comedy collapses.
The actors are clearly enjoying themselves far too much, and there’s something rather infectious about that.