Border drama sequel lacks depth, insight
The makers of Sicario: Day of the Soldado probably couldn’t have predicted just how relevant their film would be today back when it was greenlit to follow its 2015 precursor Sicario. But those hoping for a searing dramatization of the inner workings of the U.S./Mexico border patrol and its operators will be sorely disappointed with this sequel, which offers plenty of gore and violence, but little in the way of prescient or urgent social commentary.
Italian director Stefano Sollima takes over for Denis Villenueve here, making his first American feature film. Best known for the Italian television crime series Gomorrah, Sollima seems to be taking the worst elements of American crime movies and amplifying them to a distracting extreme. The subtlety of Villeneuve’s original is gone, as is the complex protagonist played by Emily Blunt. Instead, our two returning characters are the anything-goes, dry witted CIA man Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) and his mournful ally and operative Alejandro Gillick (Benicio Del Toro, soulful as ever). Also returning is screenwriter Taylor Sheridan, who garnered multiple award nominations and wins for the first Sicario screenplay, as well as for his terrific follow ups Hell or High Water and Wind River. But Sheridan seems to have fallen asleep at the typewriter here; aside from the occasional offhanded quip drolly delivered by Brolin, much of the script feels, rote, overwrought, or simply uninspired.
Sheridan’s plot here is fairly basic: the U.S. government (with a coolly pragmatic Catherine Keener as the main government liaison) decides to start a war between rival Mexican drug cartels to distract them with internal fighting, in the hopes of curtailing the smuggling of terrorists over the border, which, the film tells us, has replaced the old drug war of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Aided by Graver and Gillick, Keener’s Cynthia Foards and her government colleagues mastermind a plan to kidnap 16-year-old Isabel (Isabela Moner), daughter of the notorious cartel kingpin Carlos Reyes (who, of course, just happens to be responsible for the murder of Gillick’s family years earlier), and make it look like the work of a rival cartel. In the chaos and protracted revenge battles that will inevitably follow, the thinking goes, the cartels will lose both their interest in and ability to smuggle terrorists into the States. Right? Simple enough? Well, no, of course not, since otherwise there would be no movie past the first 15 minutes.
What we end up with, then, is an often tediously long saga in which the plan goes awry, and the various players react in different ways, wanting to either proceed, cease and desist, or some combination of both, depending on their motivations. The body count is high and the bloodshed is on par with a b-horror movie, while character development goes out the window. A scene near the end involving Del Toro is almost laughable because of how much it strains credulity, and serves only to cement the fact that Sheridan clearly fell victim to boredom, penning a tired and Hollywood-like plot point that feels embarrassing and beneath his talents.
The picture’s few highlights include a mature and sensitive performance from young Isabela Moner as the confused and frightened Isabel, who proves wiser and more emotionally attuned than she first appears. The staged kidnapping is also one of the film’s more effective scenes, allowing us to marvel at the ingenuity and boldness of CIA operations. A side plot involving Miguel (Elijah Rodriguez), a teenage boy in the border town of McAllen, TX (the real life site of the largest ICE detention center that’s been in the news lately) is the most affecting element of the whole picture. We watch Miguel move from running petty errands for low-level coyotes to becoming deeply embedded with the amoral criminals who scour the border, preying on desperate and vulnerable immigrants. A better movie – and one more worthy of Sheridan’s skill – might have focused more on Miguel’s story, and less on the numbing shoot-‘em-ups that pervade the picture.
And so we are left with a missed opportunity for a film that could have explored border issues with nuance and complexity, but instead chooses to go for a gritty, crime drama tone that ultimately detracts, and lessens the impact of the characters’ struggles. My advice is to skip this dud, and instead watch Joshua Marston’s 2004 masterpiece Maria Full of Grace, a far more powerful and engaging picture that touches on similar themes.
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Sicario: Day of the Soldado opens today at Bay Area theaters.
