bbretall-1 Review of Sicario: Day of the Soldado

Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018)

Creates and discards plots throughout the film

[4/10 · 29 June 2018]

Reading the reviews, it seems you either love this or hate it. I unfortunately fall in the latter category. I am usually REALLY soft and forgiving on plot holes and other minor quirks in a movie as long as I am entertained. This film did NOT keep me entertained, and was in no way a worthy successor to the original Sicario. This movie had multiple-personality disorder. It would start going with a plot-line, then completely drop it and switch gears to something else. Ultimately it just felt like a confusing jumble. It is sub-titled "Day of the Soldier" and that's an apt name, all of the far too few action sequences had highly trained & heavily armed US Special Forces guys completely overwhelming their opponents. No real tension at all. Maybe something to love here for "rah-rah America, see how they can pummel those backward foreigners!!" but I found it to be lacking in any punch. The trailers had this seem like a "war on the drug cartels" film. There is virtually none of that as the film mostly bogs down in a really contrived kidnapping scheme that was supposed to set off a war between the cartels, but the film showed NONE of that. Brolin & his team just go across the border into Mexico at will in helicopters and armored vehicles and end up slaughtering lots of people, most of whom are not even obvious cartel members (yes, they WORK for the cartels, but I'd have liked to see engagement with some actual Cartel forces, not Federales and lawyers who work for them). This film highlights American aggression and is strong on a total disregard for Mexico's sovereignty with a bit of "Muslim fear/hysteria" thrown in and then quickly abandoned. That said....acting by Brolin & Del Toro was top-notch, but not enough to save this mish-mash with no cohesive through-plot and plot fragments that had holes wide enough to fly one of the military helicopters through.