Sicario: Day of the Soldado

No rules this time

Overview

Agent Matt Graver teams up with operative Alejandro Gillick to prevent Mexican drug cartels from smuggling terrorists across the United States border.

Metadata
Title Sicario: Day of the Soldado
Director Stefano Sollima
Director of Photography Dariusz Wolski
Runtime 2 h 03 min
Certification
Release Date 27 June 2018
Tagline No rules this time
IMDb Id tt5052474
Trailer

A key part of the success of 2015’s Sicario was Emily Blunt’s role, which provided a moral balance to the hard-hitting story. Her character does not return in Sicario: Day of the Soldado; the main reason for this, according the director Stefano Sollima, was that they explicitly did not want this sequel to have a moral compass. Unfortunately, it turns out that is exactly what makes this movie nowhere near as interesting as its predecessor.

As per its tagline, Day of the Soldado escalates the ruthless No-Rules war on drugs. The cartels are not only trafficking white powder and people across the border, but also terrorists. So Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) re-engages Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro) to provoke one of the cartel heads by kidnapping his daughter and making it look like the work of a rival cartel. This of course leads to a lot of violence, and the Mexican bodies soon pile up.

But now that there is no moral compass in this movie, that’s just about all that remains: gritty violence without a clear point thanks to these kinds of illegal covert US interventions, all in the name of supposed US security. But does it achieve anything?

Not sure it achieves much in the war on drugs, but it also doesn’t deliver more than a disappointing sequel.

★★½