Written by: Taylor Sheridan
Starring: Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, Isabela Merced, Jeffrey Donovan, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo
Rating: [2.5/5]
Film sequels tend to have trouble of repeating success even when you bring the whole crew back together for reasons everyone knows about. However, when you go into a movie with a new director, cinematographer, and composer, all of whom made what made the previous film a straight-up masterpiece, it does not bode well for what this sequel will produce. Unsurprisingly, their imprint left Sicario: Day of the Soldado missing that extra juice thus leaving a film with much more violence but not as much substance.
Following a horrific suicide bombing from terrorists suspected to have made it to the United States through the border with Mexico, the Secretary of Defense enlists the help of CIA agent Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) to make inroads in this border crisis by all means necessary. This allows Graver to bring in Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro) once again to continue his path toward revenge.
This sequel to an already hard-hitting story returned and certainly made some decisions in how it decided to expand on the border crisis issue. It introduces the idea of terrorists making their way into the country by mules controlled by the cartels and as a result, makes for some scenes that will make you gasp in how it depicts the impact on Americans. A particular scene at a grocery store is meant to elicit some very strong feelings when you have a white and blonde mother and her child pleading for this suicide bomber to not do what he’s about to do. Again, Taylor Sheridan certainly made some decisions when crafting this sequel and many of them left me scratching my head. Then you get to what this film delves into and it just gets much more confounding as we go.
While taking this gritty take on this issue, Sheridan and new director Stefano Sollima want to get darker by taking the handcuffs off but with that, it loses much of the tension the first story provided and replaces it with a much inferior set of events. Sure you get Benicio del Toro excessively shooting down a guy in the streets of Mexico City, which is cool, I guess. In all seriousness, this feature expands on the idea of how the United States government does not have a distinct interest in controlling a chaotic drug and migrant trade but rather have an influence on the ones with the most power. This gets made explicitly clear in the first film and the deception and manipulation get ratcheted up here.
Additionally, we once again get a side story of someone directly involved in border operations but instead of peddling drugs, we get someone moving migrants. It displays a dangerous path for a particular young man but at the very least it displays why this serves as a more profitable route in life than many other options presented to them. This side plot seeks to round out the narrative as a whole but in the end feels underbaked, which by the end feels like even more of a slap in the face in why we wasted our time with this specific plotline.
On a positive note, while not bringing Emily Blunt’s Agent Macer back for obvious narrative reasons we do get Matt Graver & Alejandro returning to wreak even more havoc in this already difficult circumstance. As much as they displayed these ruthless and emotionless monsters in the first film, this feature presents them with some moral quandaries that put their mindset and motivation to the test in ways I did not expect. Perhaps in moments, their decisions appear out of character with what we have seen of them, but the evolution of their relationship makes for something intriguing to watch in the way their allegiance to each other gets put to the test. When one acts in a ruthless manner, maintaining a good relationship will prove difficult.
While a sequel to a tremendous film like Sicario probably would not have measured up, at the very least we could have received something a bit more coherent or even complete in its thought. Instead, we get a much more violent but less cogent product leaving far too many loose ends and showing it’s missing the elements that made its predecessor so gosh darn effective. This feature left so much to be desired and with the insinuation of a third film to conclude their story, at this point, they should cut their losses and stop.
Films with Josh 
