Review of Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018) by Grantd243 — 01 Jul 2018

Sicario: Day of the Soldado is the sequel to 2015's Sicario. I enjoyed this film. I liked a lot of aspects of it and found some of the scenes extremely well done, but ultimately the story has a few weak points that drag the film down more than I was hoping going into the theater. Story: Day of the Soldado picks up a while after the first film, but there is no real connection to it apart from the two main characters (Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin). Take those two characters out, and this film plays out more like an anthology film than a sequel. However, because it is a sequel, they don't give us a whole lot of set up. It shows us a tiny bit of what the characters have been up to and then throws us into the plot, which deals with the U.S. Government declaring drug cartels as terrorist organizations, giving Josh Brolin's character the ability to go about taking care of them any way he pleases. So he decides to bring in Benicio Del Toro's character to help with his plan to create a war between the cartels. Eventually, though, the daughter of one of the cartel leaders gets involved, the plan to start a war with the cartels goes off the rails, and the story ultimately changes directions. I won't get into spoilers as to what direction the story does go, but for the most part this seems to be the main criticism of the film most people have. This awesome premise of setting up a war between the cartels was given to us for about an hour, and then it just pivots to a more isolated, simple story. I get the frustration. I also think that if they had stuck with the story of the first half of the film it would have turned out to be better, but I wasn't as bothered by this story pivot as it seems like most people have been. And I think I wasn't as bothered by it because the pivot made sense given the situation. The reason why the Government added cartels to the list of terrorist organizations turned out to be false, and Josh Brolin's operation went a bit haywire on its own. The whole narrative changed for the Government, and the operation wasn't going well, so it was time to cut the cord and as a result the story had to pivot. There were a couple of story elements towards the end that I felt like were a bit...meh, mostly revolving around Benicio Del Toro's character. But, overall, I was entertained by the story all the way through.

Characters: Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin's characters don't get a whole lot of development in this film. We basically have to bring the knowledge we learned from the first film into this to really understand each character's motivations and moral compass. But, they do seem like fairly simple, badass, men. So maybe that was the intention all along. Not every character needs progression in films. Sometimes, they just are who they are. Script: I'm a HUGE fan of Taylor Sheridan. He's my favorite screenwriter working today. He'd written three movies before Day of the Soldado, and I felt like Sicario was the weakest out of the three. Now, I believe this one is the weakest out of the four he has written. The film starts off a little abruptly and takes a few minutes to find its feet, and then the multiple storylines just don't work as well together as they should. All of the storylines are good on their own, but the connections between them are a bit weak. There are also a few elements later in the script that I feel like are a bit weak, but there were some rumblings that the studio messed with his original third act of the film and changed some things. He apparently wasn't super pumped on that, just like he was pretty pissed that they forced a name change from Soldado to Sicario: Day of the Soldado. But hey, that's the movie business. I still think the screenplay is serviceable, but it's definitely not his best work.

Cinematography: There were some great shots in the first Sicario, but Stefano Sollima doesn't quite reach that level of cinematography in this film. However, he does capture some fantastic action scenes that were on par with the first film.

Overall: Day of the Soldado is a solid watch for people that are interested in the subject matter, but it doesn't reach the same level of its predecessor.