Ryan McNeil
As our world changes, sometimes our movies need to change with it.
Set some undetermined time after the events of SICARIO, this new chapter takes us back to the Mexican/American border. Illegal human traffic flows back and forth across it despite America’s best efforts, to the point that federal agent Matt Garver (Josh Brolin) declares ‘people’ the most lucrative product coming into the country.
In the world of DAY OF THE SOLDADO, some of those people come with ill-intent. So it goes that a small cell of ISIS terrorists make it into America and carry-out attacks that leave many people dead.
When the American authorities begin to pick up the trail of who these attackers were and how they gained passage into America, the evidence leads them back to a Mexican drug cartel ensuring their safe passage across the ocean. This gives special ops of the American military all the justification they need to seek retribution not against the terrorists, but upon their enablers.
However, there are rules. America cannot simply go into Mexico and begin to slaughter its citizens – no matter how criminal those citizens are. No, in order to enact justice, America cannot go to war with a drug cartel – but they can incite war between two already-feuding cartels…which is exactly what they do.
Garver, given black bag carte blanche by The Secretary of Defense (Matthew Modine) and the director of the CIA (Catherine Keener) enlists the help of Mexican “Sicario” Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro). Together, they head a unit of black ops into Mexico and kidnap the daughter of the head of one of the two biggest cartels. In doing so, they frame the other biggest cartel, and position themselves as heroes when they ferry the girl safely back across the border when the bloodshed dies down.
However, as one could imagine, a plan this intricate, illegal, and immoral leaves a lot of room for bloodshead…and before the day of the soldado is over, a lot of blood is left on the streets and sands surrounding that contentious border between two nations.
It’s only been two and a half years since SICARIO premiered in the autumn of 2015, but it might as well be twenty-five. So damned much has changed – in the world at-large, and in the specific part of it where these stories are set. If DAY OF THE SOLDADO had arrived a mere two and a half weeks after its first chapter, this instalment would still be problematic. Two and a half years on, the premise it sells is purely unacceptable. More on that later.
What cannot be understated in comparing this film to its first chapter is the talent that has scattered in several directions. Gone from the previous film are director Denis Villeneuve, star Emily Blunt, and cinematographer Roger Deakins. That might not seem like much when one considers how much other cast and crew have returned, however in the end it amounts to the beating heart of a violent piece of poetry. We never care for Matt or Alejandro nearly as much as we cared for Kate. Neither one of them ever feels like they are entirely on the side of right; neither one of them feels like they are fighting to make the world safer…let alone better.
In SICARIO, Kate was a variable – a character capable of running roughshod or being pinned-in by her opponent at any single moment. She came with calm, control, and curiosity, and stood in for us in this wild west in a way few characters can. In DAY OF THE SOLDADO, Kate is nowhere to be found, and no stand-in has been provided. Nobody offers Emily Blunt’s mixture of badassery and benevolence. The heroes this time are all antiheroes, and the world as we know it has far too many of those right now. It would be a much better place if there were more Kate Macers around, and far fewer Matt Gravers.
Even without Kate, a further failing is the absence of Denis Villeneuve. Villeneuve might not be a name one recognizes with the same readiness as Abrams, Fincher, or Bigelow, but he has quietly made a quick name for himself as an artist who understands pacing and execution. There is no singular sequence in DAY OF THE SOLDADO that stands out, and very little true tension. The stakes from moment to moment on the page are sky-high, and yet there is seldom a series of events that makes our pulse quicken, or makes our breath catch in our throat.
Every conflict that Alejandro gets himself into seems like one he will have no trouble getting out of, and considering the pure chaos of the world this movie purports to inhabit, that should never be the case. Every shadow in the desert should make our heart race, every car door closing should make us gasp. None of that happens, and that is purely and simply poor direction. The stakes in a story like DAY OF THE SOLDADO should be sky-high once the first domino is tipped. Sadly, one is likely to find greater tension on any given Sunday night TV show than any scene in this film.
All of these missteps would be enough to make a film like this forgettable, but what makes it unacceptable is the world outside of the movie screen. It is unconscionable that DAY OF THE SOLDADO begins with a sequence sending terrorists across the Mexican/American border and has them carry out a suicide bombing. America is being pulled apart at the seams right now over how best to handle the people who cross its southern border. These real people have a hard enough time trying to get their voices heard and drum up empathy on the facts alone – none of them need their situations clouded by wild fiction.
No xenophobes should be able to point to DAY OF THE SOLDADO and say “See!!??”…no would-be wall-builders who already have trouble telling fiction from fact should be given any hypothetical visual aids.
The hard truth is that an amazingly executed film would have a hard time justifying such a morally questionable inciting incident. SICARIO: DAY OF THE SOLDADO is not an amazingly executed film, so there’s no justification at all.
My opinions on the film were slightly higher, but I definitely had the same concerns about the plot of the film supporting the arguments of the Trump administration.
It also says a lot about Hollywood cost-cutting when you replace Denis Villeneuve with an unknown Italian filmmaker, with only two previous feature film credits.