Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018)
Directed by Stefano Sollima
Agent Matt Graver teams up with operative Alejandro Gillick to prevent Mexican drug cartels from smuggling terrorists across the United States border.
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The main cast is back, but without Emily Blunt (who must have been busy remaking "Mary Poppins"), and with Italian director Stefano Sollima (known for the raw "Gomorrah" television series) replacing French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve.
Though the film is the follow-up to 2015’s ultra-violent crime/thriller Sicario, it stands on its own as an intensely intricate exploration of the blurry lines that separate criminality and law enforcement, a theme often explored by the director whose past works include the Italian television series Suburra and then later, Gomorrah .
“Sicario: Day of the Soldado” isn’t so much a sequel as a pilot for an entirely new cycle of “Sicario” movies centered on the characters of the 2015 film (minus Emily Blunt), directed by the man responsible for the gritty “Gomorrah” series for Italian TV, Stefano Sollima.
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.
Writer Taylor Sheridan (Wind River, Hell or High Water) is once again at the keyboard, but this time Stefano Sollima (Gomorrah, Suburra) is behind the lens.
Before then, all you can do is marvel at how the reconfigured Sicario team — new director Stefano ‘ Gomorrah ’ Sollima, incoming cinematographer Dariusz ‘ The Martian ’ Wolski and returning screenwriter Taylor Sheridan — have managed to build on the militarised drug enforcement purgatory rendered first time around.
Like the hitman in "Leon: The Professional" (1994), he bonds with the girl and becomes her protector, complicating matters for his boss and buddy Graver.
We’ve seen it in Leon: The Professional , True Gri t (either vintage), Terminator 2 , and countless other iterations, and now it forms the narrative and thematic core of Sicario: Day of the Soldado , the awkwardly-titled follow up to 2015’s excellent narco-war drama, Sicario .
So now we’re into even more familiar territory: the tough guy reluctantly tied to and on the run with a spunky adolescent girl (“The Professional,” “Logan,” a dozen others).
There's a touch of "The Professional" in that, and perhaps even "The Searchers," to the extent he discovers empathy for someone raised by his enemy, in a way that he thought was lost.
And Villeneuve’s knack for finding something deeper in a genre scenario – see Arrival, or Blade Runner 2049 for that matter – has been replaced by Sollima’s workaday talents as a director of action.
While not as gritty or powerful as its predecessor, which was superbly rendered by director Denis Villeneuve (Blade Runner 2049), this North American debut for Italian filmmaker Stefano Sollima still is consistently intriguing and harrowing as it emphasizes action over politics.
The original “Sicario” was directed by Denis Villeneuve, who likes to immerse the audience in waves of sound and alluring imagery as seen recently in “Blade Runner 2049” and “Arrival.”
And Villeneuve is on a hot streak on par with Sheridan’s, becoming a sort of sci-fi wunderkind in recent years with Arrival , Blade Runner 2049 , and the upcoming Dune re-boots.
And if you can’t get the original director Denis Villeneuve (“Arrival,” “Blade Runner 2049”)), what sort of movie-making logic leads to Stefano Sollima, an Italian TV director?
Villeneuve and Deakins combined again in Blade Runner 2049 (2017).
And Villeneuve’s knack for finding something deeper in a genre scenario – see Arrival, or Blade Runner 2049 for that matter – has been replaced by Sollima’s workaday talents as a director of action.
The original “Sicario” was directed by Denis Villeneuve, who likes to immerse the audience in waves of sound and alluring imagery as seen recently in “Blade Runner 2049” and “Arrival.”
The original film (directed by Arrival ’s Denis Villeneuve) gave us an inroad into a complicated and constantly shifting landscape in the person of agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), who was our proxy in the story — a smart but naive character who slowly came to discover the full horror of the way matters of drug trade across the border were really settled.
And Villeneuve is on a hot streak on par with Sheridan’s, becoming a sort of sci-fi wunderkind in recent years with Arrival , Blade Runner 2049 , and the upcoming Dune re-boots.
And if you can’t get the original director Denis Villeneuve (“Arrival,” “Blade Runner 2049”)), what sort of movie-making logic leads to Stefano Sollima, an Italian TV director?
There’s hints and touches of various other magnificent scores in Hildur Guðnadóttir’s work here – Jóhann Jóhannsson’s delicate majesty on Prisoners inspires the more reserved moments, while the atmospheric soundscapes of Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 are fondly remembered during the wide, precursor shots to the rather constant carnage.
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I wish the “Sicario” name had been dropped from “Sicario: Day of the Soldado” because maybe I would’ve enjoyed the film more.
La primera y más importante de las dificultades a las que este filme tuvo que hacer frente consistió en la contrariedad de conseguir que la esencia del Sicario original sobreviviera a la salida del proyecto de Denis Villeneuve.
Sicario: Day of the Soldado continues the saga of Central Investigation Agency officer Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) and Alejandro Gillick (Benicio Del Toro).
When was the last time you watched the first film Sheridan wrote, 2015's Sicario?
Picking up some time after the events of 2015’s Sicario , screenwriter Taylor Sheridan continues Graver and Alejandro’s stories with Sicario: Day of Soldado, an aggressively pugnacious sequel that’s a viscerally uncomforting descent into a self-created hell on earth overflowing in violence and death.
Elements of the dirty-war epic have been cropping up in recent espionage and battle films: the ethical ambiguity in Kathryn Bigelow’s get-bin-Laden film Zero Dark Thirty (2012), the implacably vicious action in David Ayer’s World War II tank movie Fury (2014).
Screenwriter Taylor Sheridan, whose other credits include the grim bank robbery movie Hell or High Water (2016), has a brilliant creation at hand in Benicio Del Toro’s Alejandro.
If the writer-director had ridden into town, dropped just one of his neo-Western wonders — Hell or High Water or Wind River — and then disappeared into the sunset, he'd have left a permanent mark on movie history.
After Sicario and Hell or High Water, Taylor Sheridan was an intriguing new talent, the sort of screenwriter who made mature films for mature audiences.
Mr. Sollima and Mr. Sheridan (who also wrote “Hell or High Water” and “Wind River,” two superior recent neo-westerns ) are canny about what the audience might want in the way of cruelty, and also about how much we are likely to accept.
Perhaps the success of the similarly themed Netflix series Narcos, which premiered a month before Sicario, might have encouraged writer Taylor Sheridan (watch Hell or High Water to understand his obsession with dusty neo-Western badlands) to dig further into United States’ law enforcement’s uneasy equation with Mexican and South American drug cartels.