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"Sicario" Sequel Lives in the Shadow

"Sicario: Day of the Soldado" is the sequel to 2015's "Sicario," which was directed by Denis Villeneuve and starred Emily Blunt. It was gorgeously captured by legendary cinematographer Richard Deakins and featured a haunting score by Johann Johannsson (who sadly passed away earlier this year). Villeneuve, Blunt, and Deakins have sat the sequel out, and it appears they were key ingredients to making "Sicario" the film it was because their absence in each respective category is noticeable throughout this followup.

Taking over the helm is director Stefano Sollima, who stages and executes some fine action pieces but doesn't have a hold on the film's structure or tension to make "Sicario: Day of the Soldado" anything compelling. There are often times when the movie feels like it's trying to do an exact copy and paste of the first film, but it presents itself more as a copy of copy that was faxed twice (remember fax machines?).

Taylor Sheridan returns as screenwriter, along with stars Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin. After a series of suicide bombings, Matt (Brolin) heads to the Mexican border to try and figure out how terrorists are entering the country. He promises he is going to have to get dirty to complete this task, which is exactly what the Secretary of Defense (Matthew Modine) wants from him (Catherine Keener is also in there as the head of the mission in a one-note role). He teams back up with Alejandro (Del Toro) to pit Mexican cartels against each other and kidnap the daughter of one of the kingpins as a pawn towards Alejandro's personal agenda.

Whew. Exhausted yet? There's a lot going on in the film without it ever really saying too much, even if the movie strikes a few notes of relevance to what is going on in the mess of our world today. For that reason, some will be turned off by what "Sicario: Day of the Soldado" has to offer. As a film, it's a faint shadow of its predecessor, never once capturing the level of craftsmanship and tension that made the first film so good (it was high on my Top 10 list of 2015). Villeneuve slowly cranked up the suspense and gripping nature of the movie even-handedly but Sollima isn't too concerned with that. "Sicario: Day of the Soldado" isn't about atmosphere but more concerned with escalating the violence. Sollima's vision of Sheridan's script might play better with a populist crowd than the first film but "Sicario: Day of the Soldado" doesn't work by comparison and it doesn't really work on its own.

What's strikingly off about "Sicario:  Day of the Soldado" is its lack of rhythm, mostly affected by the editing by Matthew Newman. For a substantial portion of the beginning, the movie plods along at a choppy pace, throwing scenes up against each other without much cohesion. Sometimes the movie gets a bit too ahead of itself; you'll wonder where we are and what the characters are up to but the film sadly never gives us a reason to really care.

The returning players slip back into their roles comfortably and Brolin does the gruff agent thing with great ease. Del Toro's Alejandro is one of the best performances of the Oscar-winning actor's career and he continues that in the sequel, offering more through his performance than what is in the thin screenplay. The movie is just missing the ethical and moral nuance Blunt brought to her role, and there are moments when that is transferred to Del Toro's character, but the movie isn't concerned with going too deep and exploring the character to its fullest potential.

Sheridan has stated his vision of a "Sicario" trilogy so it's not much of a spoiler to say that this film steers in that direction. There's a subplot that feels superfluous for most of the runtime but ends up being a bit of a contrived navigator towards Sheridan's future vision. If there is more to explore with this world, it's imperative the original team comes back to recapture what they did on the first outing, because "Sicario: Day of the Soldado" fumbles without them.