Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Sicario: Day of the Soldado 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 11, 2018

There’s a good reason why there wasn’t a Citizen Kane 2, not the least of which is that Charles Foster Kane is of course deceased as the film begins (oops — forgot a spoiler alert). Some films are so sui generis that they themselves don’t seem to require any “offspring”, so to speak. Now, Sicario, for all of its visceral intensity and unsettling depictions of the smarmy underbelly of international drug trafficking, is probably not in the same league as Orson Welles’ immortal masterpiece, but the nagging question may still remain as to why a sequel was deemed necessary. That question may seem even more pressing when the first part of Sicario: Day of the Soldado arguably plays more like a sibling rather than a sequel, in this case to terrorist themed shows like Homeland. What’s perhaps most unsettling from a structural standpoint is screenwriter Taylor Sheridan’s decision not to include a “vicarious audience” character like the first Sicario’s Kate Macer (played by Emily Blunt), as is actually addressed overtly in one of the supplements included on this release. That tends to make the story unfold from an “outsider”’s perspective, something that perhaps inevitably leads to a bit of distancing. All of this said, Sicario: Day of the Soldado is a good deal better than it probably has any right to be, with some fine performances from returning cast members Josh Brolin as Matt Graver, Benicio del Toro as Alejandro Gillick and Jeffrey Donovan as Steve Forsing.

In fact for the first half hour or so, some might be hard pressed to delineate what this film has to do with the first Sicario, despite an early text crawl offering some data points about the porous United States - Mexico border, and the human trafficking that takes place across that border. The film opens with what looks like a routine border patrol operation, with a bunch of helicopters and ground troops rounding up a bunch of illegal immigrants. But one guy takes off from the group and sets off an explosion in a suicide bombin, and later prayer rugs are found at the location. Another even more horrifying incident is then shown where a bunch of Muslim men walk into a typical looking store and set off several explosions via suicide bombs again, all of this with nary a word about illicit drug dealing.

When another vignette documents the capture of a suspect in Somalia by a group of US black ops troops, Sicario: Day of the Soldado certainly seems to be trafficking itself in something other than the content of the first film. But as soon as Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) walks in to interrogate the Somalian captive, things start to fall into place, with the interesting tidbit that some of the terrorists in the United States didn't fly there, and so must have traveled by ship, something that, considering they were evidently Yemeni, required the tacit approval of the by now infamous Somali "pirates" who act as "border patrols" of a sort themselves in the waters off of their country.

However, the illicit drug trade does of course begin to enter the picture, though the connection between drug cartels and (another kind of) terrorist is arguably not that well linked or contextualized in Sheridan’s screenplay. With those in power, including Secretary of Defense James Riley (Matthew Modine), wanting to thwart any further influx of terrorists across the border, and with the assumption made that the drug cartels are complicit in getting the terrorists across the border, Garver and his team decide to manufacture a drug war, pitting cartel against cartel. It’s not exactly a new premise for a film dealing with gangsters and the underworld, and it’s perhaps unavoidable that parts of Sicario: Day of the Soldado come off as derivative, even if several sequences admittedly provide pretty significant jolts of adrenaline.

While there are some fantastically effective moments in Sicario: Day of the Soldado, including an urban hit of a Mexican mobster orchestrated by Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro), unfortunately Sheridan tends to fray some of his energy by getting into what might be termed “the next generation” with regard to a couple of major supporting characters. One of these is Isabel Reyes (Isabel Moner), the daughter of a cartel head who is “renditioned” herself in a scheme that fingers a rival gang for the kidnapping in order to foment violence between the groups. The other “youngster” is a Miguel Hernandez (Elijah Rodriguez), whose schooling in the ways of the cartel provides what is arguably the closest “insider” character in this film, even if the point of view this time is decidedly anti-heroic. There are interweavings of the Isabel and Miguel stories, but the overall arc of Sicario: Day of the Soldado seems somewhat more random than in the first film, and there are both glaring lapses of logic (why for instance does Gillick remove his facemask right before he executes a mobster, especially when he’s out in broad daylight and the whole operation is supposed to implicate a rival gang?), as well as curiously underdeveloped situations that never really exploit tensions as much as in the first film (the “escape” of Isabel is probably the most notable example).

What may chafe at the sensibilities of some fans of the first film is how generic so much of Sicario: Day of the Soldado can seem. It’s like Sheridan decided to shear his characters of some of their most distinctive traits, in order to provide an easier template to build a series out of. The performances throughout this follow up are routinely quite compelling, and some of the individual scenes crackle with something amounting to the same energy levels as in Sicario, but there are arguably too many subplots for the film’s own good, something that ultimately leads to a number of unnecessary detours before things are properly set up for what seems like an inevitable third Sicario film.

Note: My colleague Brian Orndorf was considerably less impressed with Sicario: Day of the Soldado than I was. You can read Brian's thoughts on the film here.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Note: Screenshots are sourced from the 1080p Blu-ray.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado is presented on 4K UHD courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment with a 2160p transfer in 2.40:1. We videophiles like to spout statistics like bitrates and capture resolution and all of that, but you know what? Sometimes there's just a touch of something inexplicable that happens, and despite this being yet another Arri shot featured finished at a 2K DI, the 4K UHD presentation really struck me as one of the more impressive ones I've personally reviewed, at least in terms of the differences in detail levels and (perhaps especially) palette nuances between the 1080p Blu-ray and 2160p UHD presentations. Shadow detail is noticeably improved throughout the 4K version, beginning with the opening sequence, where I suddenly saw all sorts of information in the border crossing area scenes that hadn't been as apparent in the 1080p Blu-ray version. Detail and fine detail levels are improved across the board, and depth of field, as in the harrowing sequence with a perhaps mortally wounded Gillick, is really precise and solid. Some of the POV material, notably some of the early "night vision" footage, and what looks to me like a lower res GoPro (or the like) overhead shot, probably looks rougher in this version, but that only adds to its verité authenticity. Despite general improvements in shadow detail, there are still a couple of scenes shrouded in darkness where detail levels aren't noticeably improved over the 1080p version, but those are actually pretty few and far between. Dimly lit scenes like the interrogation scene between Garver and the Somali pirate not only offer better detail levels, but HDR has added a really interesting new orange tint. Other detail levels in things like the office window blinds in a scene with Graver and the Secretary of Defense, or the border fence that is seen on a couple of occasions, are also better delineated in this version.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Sicario: Day of the Soldado ups the ante on an already nice sounding DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 track on the 1080p Blu-ray by providing a Dolby Atmos track on this 4K UHD disc. Right off the bat, with the thumping, reverberating sounds accompanying some of the production mastheads, engagement of the Atmos channels is immediately apparent, something the continues through expected moments like the sweep of helicopter rotors passing overhead, or even the ambient "wash" after the two explosions early in the film. Several extended sequences involving cars also benefit from really nice new positioning of effects. Hildur Guðnadóttir's evocative pulsing score also seemed to hover more in midair at some junctures, and almost always is spread throughout the side and rear channels. Dialogue, effects and score are all mixed extremely well on this nicely modulated track.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The 4K UHD disc contains no supplemental material. The 1080p Blu-ray disc included with this release contains the supplements detailed in our Sicario: Day of the Soldado Blu-ray review.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Sicario: Day of the Soldado benefits from its 4K UHD presentation in both the video and audio departments, sometimes perhaps surprisingly so. This is one of the few films I've reviewed recently where I unhesitatingly recommend the 4K UHD version for those who are perhaps on the fence (border or otherwise) about which format to get the film in. The only downside is the minimal bonus items included on the 1080p Blu-ray are not ported over to the 4K UHD disc.