Sicario: Day of the Soldado is probably the start of a franchise, but is closer to the 2nd Matrix and Pirates of the Caribbean movies than the 2nd Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, in that the first movie was such a surprise that it warranted sequels. Day of the Soldado feels like an amped up version of the original, replacing a clear message and strong character development with explosions and shootouts. It’s fun, but also more hollow at its center, probably caused by a gunshot wound from Benicio Del Toro.
After some terrorist attacks get tied to the Mexican drug cartels, government official James Riley (Matthew Modine) calls in Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) to try to create a war with the drug cartels in Mexico. With the backing of Riley and his associate Cynthia Foards (Catherine Keener), Graver enlists his best sicario (meaning hitman), Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro), to help kidnap Isabel Reyes (Isabela Moner), daughter of a famous drug cartel kingpin. As the US government tries to plant Isabel into a rival cartel’s terrain, corruption and whistleblowers threaten to stop their plan from succeeding, forcing Matt and Alejandro to potentially make drastic, terrible choices to save their own skin.
Day of Soldado opens with a 10 minute montage of multiple suicide bombings and drone strikes, and doesn’t let up for a second when it comes to action. If I had a timer, I’d wager someone is either being shot, beat up, tortured, or bombed every 15 minutes that go by. The violence is intended to keep your eyes on the screen, but those scenes only work when Soldado sets them up correctly. Similar to the first Sicario, Soldado has some very tense scenes that build very nicely, usually around border crossings, the best involving a dirt road. The best thing Soldado does is give us on the ground views of what it is like to cross the border illegally, including how dangerous it is, expensive it is for the poor, and how people at the border get sucked into the economy that develops because of the desire to be in the United States. We also get some great tracking shots of desolate desert surroundings that add to the comically extensive despondence of the story Soldado is telling.
But here’s the problem. These scenes of violence and exploitation go to serve a message that is at best mixed, and at worst pretty blatantly anti-minority. The first 10 minutes contain Soldado’s most powerful image of a terrorist attack in Kansas City, but that attack is somehow linked to all the terrorist organizations who are filtering through the porous Mexican border. A better story would be that the government was leaking a false story like this to the press to justify expanded money defending the US border, making Alejandro and Matt’s actions more sinister. Instead, the suicide bombing is just fear mongering manipulation to keep your eyes glued to the screen. That bombing is forgotten by the end of the first hour, where the story pivots to the kidnapping. The kidnapping story would have more legs if the movie showed how the shootouts/battles were being portrayed in the media better, but Soldado just wants you to watch the eye candy of a drug war, not provide any real insight into how good or bad the cartel wars are being fought. Also, we have to believe that decades long combatants like Matt and Alejandro would all of a sudden drop all of their logical decision making because one girl sort of inspired them? It’s a big leap the movie doesn’t really earn. At that point, Day of the Soldado becomes Benicio Del Toro’s superhero movie, where he does things so ridiculous that the only explanation is that he’s wearing a cape under all his Kevlar.
Don’t go to Sicario: Day of the Soldado to learn anything about life on the border of the United States and Mexico. Go to see cool shootouts, decent one liners, and Benicio Del Toro simply being a badass moment after moment. By the end of the movie, you realize the (inevitable) third movie is gonna be about him, which is fine, but you also wonder who his plastic surgeon is, because early estimates point to him being shot at least a few times and he comes out looking great by movie’s end. If anyone knows who Alejandro’s surgeon was, please tweet at me.