Sicario 2 : Day Of The Soldado

"You can't hurt me, you're an American, you have too many rules." 

" This is Africa, I can do whatever the fuck I want to you." 

A man sits sweating in a container eyeing bottles of water and worrying that they will be used to torture him. An American operative enters and informs him that if he doesn't tell him what he needs to know, the water will be the least of his worries, and that his family will killed. The sweating man scoffs knowing this is an empty promise. But modern day America doesn't make empty promises when it comes to violence anymore.....

When a terrorist attack in Kansas City kills dozens of innocent civilians, intel leads the American government to believe that narco cartels are sneaking terrorists across the border. Department of Justice special operative Matt Graver is brought onboard and given free reign to stir up the hornets nest and destabilise the cartels responsible. To do this he'll need the help of his old co-worker Alejandro Gillick. Interweaved into this is the story of a young Mexican American man being schooled in the ways of people smuggling.

Sicario 2 : Day Of The Soldado is a dark dark film. It's the story of bad men who do bad things. There's no heroes here. The people on both sides of the fence are as bad as each other. Atrocity is commonplace. It's a timely watch. It does not show America in a good light. It shouldn't. America isn't a good place any more. Our "heroes" are murderers of men, women and children. Rules of engagement are an afterthought to these men. A few years ago you'd have thought this far-fetched but current events on the U.S. / Mexico border have shown us that anything goes down there.

I liked this but it's not a film to enjoy. It's a tough watch and the opening minutes contain moments that will disturb you but if you can get past those you'll find an intelligent and grown up thriller that does not shy away from shades of gray. It positively revels them. The first Sicario was my favourite film of 2015 and while this isn't as good as that it doesn't let the side down either. A few issues I'll mention later knock it back from very good to good. It's lack of a moral centre is troubling though. The first film had Kate, an FBI agent thrown into the deep end who had big reservations about what she saw. Every main character onscreen in this film is in the life, even the people caught up in proceedings as collateral damage. It's hard to sympathise with anyone and when you finally do it's with the person you least expected to.

Josh Brolin (he's had a hell of a year hasn't he!) as Matt Graver is good as always in his role and might be the bigger name on the poster but this film belongs to Benicio Del Toro. He's a fantastic actor who can say more with one sad look than most others can do with reams of dialogue. It takes an actor of his calibre to help us stomach his character. Alejandro is a ruthless bastard. The first Sicario film made that very clear. Yet somehow this film manages to humanise him. A quiet moment between him and a deaf man in the desert brings a much needed touch of humanity in amongst the carnage he causes and when the end of the film rolls around you'll, against everything, find yourself actually rooting for him. Hmmm this probably says something bad about me. Isabel Moner and Elijah Rodriguez are fine also as a pair of teens from very different backgrounds who get caught up in the whole mess. 

The ending though. I've issues with the final third of the film. As mentioned earlier it's what stops the film from being very good indeed. It all hinges on a coincidence so silly that some people won't be able to get past it. It's lazy writing and has no place in a gritty story like this. Then something happens very late in the film that may make you incredulous. Events that would not seem out of place in a comic book but seem very out of place here. And I'm not even going to mention just how wasted Catherine Keener is as the person in command of US operations. She's too good of an actor to be left in the background like this.

This was a sequel that wasn't really needed. The star (Emily Blunt), director ( Denis Villeneuve) and superb cinematographer (Roger Deakins) of the first film weren't coming back and it was hard to see where the story would go but new director Stefano Sollima and returning writer Taylor Sheridan have made it work. It's far from perfect but it's a thriller for today. It's a brutal and vital look at a horrible world.