After a surprise encounter with Sicario a few months back, I was delighted to learn of an imminent sequel, even without the presence of Emily Blunt and director Denis Villeneuve (the latter of whom gave us Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 in the interim, which I’d say is a fair trade indeed). Here we have Sicario: Day of the Soldado, which many critics are calling an “unexpected” or “unlikely” franchise – though in the age of shared universes, can we really be surprised? And while Villeneuve’s absence is felt, to Soldado’s detriment, it’s only a detriment that exists in hindsight, as Soldado continues to be that curious kind of action film that relies successfully on overtones of dread.When the United States government (represented by Catherine Keener and Matthew Modine) suspects that Mexican cartels are aiding Islamic terrorists in illegal border crossings, DOJ operative Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) cooks up a scheme with attorney-turned-hitman Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro) to turn the cartels against each other. The plan, as most of Graver’s are, is all sorts of morally ambiguous, leading to violence on both sides of the border when a cartel princess (Isabela Moner) is kidnapped.
The first thing one notices about Soldado in comparison to Sicario is likely the result of Dariusz Wolski replacing Roger Deakins as cinematographer. Deakins, first among his profession, gave us a Sicario with lush color-washed landscapes and dusty interiors. Wolski is capable, though his images are much more washed-out and dusty to the point of being sandy. It is, I would say, the difference between Deakins on Blade Runner 2049 and Wolski on the Pirates of the Caribbean films – one a sprawling epic and the other a poppy genre flick; both engaging and visually appearing in their craft, but one with infinitely more depth (and the other with infinitely more Depp).
This is not to say that Soldado is shallower than Sicario, though it is perhaps less overwhelmingly potent. With the absence of Blunt’s Kate Macer as a moral compass, Brolin and del Toro are untethered, though incoming director Stefano Sollima smartly places that morality debate squarely in the audience’s hands; where Kate Macer might have been on screen to interrogate the wisdom of crossing lines, Sollima and returning scripter Taylor Sheridan find room for those questions between the silences. I think most of us came away from Sicario wanting to see more of what these two men could do, how far they were willing to go, and on that count Soldado is a hearty success. While there is perhaps nothing as shocking as Alejandro’s last-reel dinner incursion in Sicario, there are a number of opportunities when a more unwavering hero would have balked at the choices presented. Moreover, there is a fascinating arc about the relationship between Graver and Alejandro, one that these two silent men of stone would never acknowledge but one which undeniably affects the way they conduct their business.
If there is a difference between Sicario and Soldado which underscores the latter’s inferiority in the face of a latter-day American classic, it’s that Soldado ends with much less finality than its predecessor, punting a fuller conclusion for a Sicario 3 (a real pet peeve of mine). Where Sicario ended with Kate Macer confronted with a full understanding of Alejandro and a simultaneous inability to reckon with the horror of that knowledge, Soldado concludes by revisiting and deepening our sense of just what this man can do, and in that task del Toro is brutally terrifying, cold and dispassionate in pursuit of his own unique goal. That the film expects its audience to remember the translation of “sicario” (hint: “hitman”) to fully grasp the ending may be more my shortcoming than the film’s, but it is almost Empire Strikes Back-ian in its promise that there is at least one more story to be told with these characters.
If I didn’t enjoy Soldado as much as I did up to that point, it might have rankled me more than it actually does. But as compelling as the preceding two hours were, I found myself charmed by the promise of a Sicario 3. Likely none of us expected a Soldado, let alone a third, but this “unlikely” franchise carves a place for itself by filling its world with uncompromisingly gray characters in impossible situations, which escalate into dreadful stakes until the blood runs like a staccato rainfall. You’d think it’d get old, that we’d be numb to the dread and the shock of death, but Soldado finds a rhythm where that danger never fades. For two different directors, absent collaboration, to achieve that same Hitchcockian anticipation of the bang, the franchise that might not have needed to be ends up finding a very good identity for itself in the midst of blockbuster shared universes of much larger scale. (Never mind that Brolin figures prominently into at least three, counting this one.)
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