It’s hard to imagine anybody that watched director Denis Villeneuve’s 2015 cartel crime drama Sicario and came away thinking: good film, but it needs a sequel. That feeling is admittedly rare in any kind of movie, other than franchise installments which blur the line between ‘cliffhanger’ and ‘gratuitous cash grab’ – like The Maze Runner and Avengers: Infinity War. It is also oddly refreshing, such is the severity of sequelitis in Hollywood, for a sequel to be predicated at least in part on exploring a timely social issue, suggesting the franchise in question might stand for something more than ticket stubs and audience-baiting.
In the case of Sicario: Day of the Soldado, the core issue is control of the US/Mexico border. The film’s release coincides with renewed interest in the border debate, egged on – like most talking points coming out of the White House these days – by belligerent tweets and contentious statements from Donald Trump.
Early in the film, director Stefano Sollima captures a helicopter following people sprinting towards the Texas border, illuminating them in an eerie spotlight. Sollima switches location to a suburban supermarket, where his camera lingers outside the door, observing customers through a glass wall and entrance, seemingly unwilling to enter. And for good reason: we witness two terrorists detonate bombs strapped to themselves. This shockingly arresting introduction kicks off a film that darts from one pulse-pounding vignette to another, before eventually settling on conventional character-driven drama.
it moves like a bat out of hell – with a visceral impact approaching the gritty rush of the great, breathlessly intense 1966 Italian-Algerian war film The Battle of Algiers
The original Sicario was led by Emily Blunt, playing FBI agent Kate Macer. She is absent this time, along with several other key talent – including Villeneuve and cinematographer Roger Deakins. Screenwriter Taylor Sheridan returns, leaning on Matt (Josh Brolin) and Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro) as his key instigators. The former is recruited by the US government to destabilize the cartels by creating a war between them, the Americans livid that cartels are helping terrorists cross the border. Matt approaches the revenge-seeking Alejandro, pitching to him a scenario where there are “no rules this time.”
When Day of the Soldado soars, it moves like a bat out of hell – with a visceral impact approaching the gritty rush of the great, breathlessly intense 1966 Italian-Algerian war film The Battle of Algiers. You never doubt Soldado’s realism nor its style, shaped in part by cinematographer Dariusz Wolski’s damply graded and skillfully restrained camerawork. But unlike Algiers the pace can’t sustain itself. The director moves from a frenetic opening act to a wobbly second and, finally, a slower but more focused third. In that middle stretch, the absence of a protagonist takes its toll.
Why wasn’t the story framed from Alejandro’s perspective? He ultimately becomes the focus of the narrative; one wonders why Sheridan (whose scripts include Hell or High Water and Wind River) took so long to pledge his loyalties. The sleepy menace of Benicio del Toro is again on fine display, though Alejandro’s moral complexity barely transcends the ‘became an angel of death after they murdered my family’ trope. After playing cut-out alpha male villains in Infinity War and Deadpool 2, Brolin is again directed to reek of dangerous masculinity.
Is there a point to this film? The director and screenwriter appear to rest on the fallback position of filmmakers who broach incendiary material without a clear ideological context: that they are ‘shining a light’ on dark matters. The current political situation around the border is presented as such a grubby, human-dealing bloodbath the film can’t help but champion some form of change, but that is not the same as saying it has much on its mind. Sollima and Sheridan revert to the familiar Orwellian outlook on war, as a cyclical industry propelled by bureaucracy – recently explored in David Michôd cagey satire War Machine, about American military involvement in Afghanistan.
Day of the Soldado is more ‘street’ than Michôd’s under-rated film, and detached from overt social/political commentary. It gets down and dirty and has no great sense of insight or purpose. You could call this a ‘morally murky’ perspective, or use a more complementary descriptor such as ‘procedural’. It’s unlikely viewers will come away from this film thinking that it is empty, given how many moments are conjured vividly and memorably. And yet it feels like there is a gaping hole where its soul should have been. Not focusing more on Benicio del Toro’s character was a misstep; he is the film’s one true source of gravitas.
