Newspaper Page Text
THURSDAY, JULY 12 - 18, 2018
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PAGE 11B
MOVIEREVIEW
In Day of the Soldado, an equally bleak Sicario
BY JAKE COYLE
(AP) There’s an oppressive
bleakness to the brutal action-
thriller Sicario: Day of the Soldado.
But with faces like Josh Brolin and
Benicio del Toro, what are you
going to do?
Amid the dust cloud of violence
that settles over the Sicario sequel,
nothing stands out like the furrowed
brow of Brolin’s grimace or the
cold, worn-out stare of del Toro.
They look like gunslingers from an
Anthony Mann or Sam Peckinpah
western, just with heavier ammo
and dark sunglasses. With such
sunken, world-weary eyes, in the
heyday of film noir del Toro and
Brolin would have made a killing.
They do plenty of that, too, in
Sicario: Day of the Soldado. Matt
Graver (Brolin) and his cartel lawyer
turned undercover pal Alejandro
Gillick (del Toro) are again called
into action in a black-ops operation
along the Mexico border, this time
without the benefit of Emily Blunt,
who starred in Denis Villeneuve’s
Sicario (2015).
Blunt played a less experienced
FBI agent with the naivety to be
horrified by things that Graver and
Gillick wouldn’t bat an eye at—
you know, sissy stuff like dozens
of decaying corpses stuffed like
insulation into a Mexican cartel safe
house. No, Graver and just-as-grave
Gillick have seen it all. And Blunt’s
absence leaves Day of Soldado
without the mounting sense of
dread that defined the first one.
It also lacks the muscular
camera work of Villeneuve and
cinematographer Roger Deakins.
With such missing talent, it would
be easy to view Day of the Soldado
as a cheaper knockoff. Easier, still,
considering the movie’s poster—of
a gun-toting skeleton draped in a
flag—most resembles a Guns N’
Roses album cover.
It’s better than that, but not by
much. Stefano Sollima (Gomorrah)
steps in to direct a script by Taylor
Sheridan, whose neo-westerns (Hell
or High Water, Wind River) have
made him the genre’s best new hope.
Sheridan wrote Sicario, too, which
sought to modernize the drug-war
thriller to catch it up to the lethal
battles of today’s cartels.
But in its ballet of SUVS
sweeping across the border,
Sicario mostly stood for a ruthless,
borderless American power
equaling the ultra-violence of a new
era, with all the moral doubt that
accompanies such a fight. Day of the
Soldado begins with a similar stab at
political relevance. A supermarket
in Kansas City is attacked by a
swarm of suicide bombers, the last
of whom we watch detonate his vest
just as a mother and child are trying
to tiptoe past.
Sheridan and Sollima could
easily defend the imagery: This is
indeed a not uncommon happening.
But it’s a sensationalist way to show
it. Is there anyone left who doesn’t
understand the horror of terrorism?
It’s believed the bombers were
jihadis who infiltrated the country
by slipping through the Mexican
border. Told that the cartels
control the trafficking of migrants
over the border, the Secretary of
Defense (Matthew Modine) opts to
clandestinely prompt a war between
two cartels. Graver’s plan is to
kidnap the 12-year-old daughter of a
cartel kingpin to kick-start the war.
“There are no rules this time,”
Graver tells Gillick, even if it’s
unclear how much Graver ever
heeded the rules in the first place.
Where Day of the Soldado
most succeeds is in the blur or
maybe altogether disintegration
of American altruism in a heinous
fight. In one scene, Gillick
switches from kidnapper to DEA
agent by unhurriedly slipping
on a government jacket, but not
changing gun or even his seat.
Things go from dark to darker
still, as Day of the Soldado sets its
genre tale against the backdrop
of Mexican migrants in a way
that sometimes feels topical and
sometimes exploitive. As grim as the
world of Sicario is—and Sollima and
Sheridan really wants us to know
just how grim it is—there’s also a
sentimental stab at redemption by
way of the kingpin daughter (played
by a very good Isabela Moner), who
ends up in a desert trek with Gillick.
Still, there’s a mean potency to
the borderland noir of both Sicario
films, enough that it sometimes
recalls another tale of explosions
and drug enforcement agents on
both sides of the border: Orson
Welles’ Touch of Evil.
Day of the Soldado is too sober
and grim for the sweaty heat of
Touch of Evil. But it has taken to
heart one of its best lines: “All
border towns bring out the worst in
a country.”
Sicario: Day of Soldado, a Sony
Pictures release, is rated R by
the Motion Picture Association
of America for “strong violence,
bloody images, and language.”
Running time: 123 minutes. Two
and a half stars out of four.