Movie Review Alert! Checking my movie blog site I noticed the last movie I reviewed was “Blade Runner 2019” in October of 2017. Shortly thereafter two things occurred: 1) I purchased a jail broke Amazon Fire stick and started watching movies in the comfort of my living room, and 2) we were hit by a plethora of Super Hero movies at the theater. In the first instance I felt a little “dishonest” about reviewing movies that I had watched at home, (notice I didn’t say I felt bad about the way I had watched them), and in the second instance, I just wasn’t interested in a lot of those films. I was interested in “Sicario: Day of the Soldado, and had planned on seeing it from the moment that it was announced that there would be a sequel to “Sicario,” which I reviewed in March of 2016 and gave a 9.5 out of 10. Although Sicario only earned about 50 million domestically, someone was smart enough to realize that the public needs movies like this. For the realism; for the connectivity to a very real problem that we are facing in our country today, and of course, for the great acting. Many of the key actors from the first film return, (sans Emily Blunt); but most importantly, back are Josh Brolin as Matt Graver and Benicio Del Toro as the Columbian assassin, Alejandro Gillick. After a terrorist attack in Kansas City, the U.S. government suspects the bombers entered the United States from the Mexican border In response, the U.S. government adds the Mexican cartels to their terrorist watch list and attempts to destabilize the cartels’ smuggling enterprise by secretly trying to start a war between them all. Matt Graver, (Brolin), brings in his old friend Alejandro Gillick, (Del Toro) to kidnap the cartel head’s young daughter, then frame another cartel for it. Things are going according to plan until it’s discovered that the terrorists were all born in New Jersey, so the Mexican cartel plan is scraped, leaving Alejandro on his own with the girl he kidnapped – with orders to kill her. The story screenplay is by Taylor Sheridan, who also penned the first Sicario, Hell or High Water, and Wind River, all excellent.
This time around, “Day of the Soldado,” has a change of Directors, from Denis Villeneuveto to Stefano Sollima, who lost none of the feeling , pace, cinematography, or sound of the first film.
Sicario: Day of the Soldado is an intense, at times morally ambiguous, and gritty thriller that will leave you wanting more. And, now, Benicio del Toro finally has a franchise of his own. There will be more sequels and since little is known of the Gillick character’s past, I predict a prequel, with a younger actor playing that part. Another 9.5 out of 10.
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