Sicario: Day of the Soldado Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

Sicario: Day of the Soldado Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 10, 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 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sicario: Day of the Soldado is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. Shot with a variety of Arri models and finished at a 2K DI (according to the IMDb), Sicario: Day of the Soldado boasts a generally sharp and well detailed image — when lighting conditions allow. As can readily be made out in several of the screenshots accompanying this review, a lot (maybe even most) of this film takes places in shrouded environments, and there are times when shadow detail is fairly minimal, and even making out major items like main characters in the frame can be a bit challenging. As with the first film, selected sequences have been graded toward a kind of sickly yellow color, which, when combined with the omnipresent darkness, can tend to slightly mask fine detail levels at times. In the more brightly lit moments, fine detail levels perk up appreciably, offering more precise looks at things like facial beard stubble or textures on fabrics.

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

While perhaps not quite as boisterous as the track on the first Sicario, Sicario: Day of the Soldado's DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 provides a glut of great surround activity at virtually every turn. The opening scenes offer nice panning sounds as helicopters track down interlopers, and within just the first few minutes of the film, two major explosions occur which offer some forceful LFE. While there are certainly a large number of "talky" scenes in the film, typically ambient environmental sounds continue to populate the side and rear channels, and the outdoor material especially really crackles with authenticity. The film is dedicated to composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, who scored the first film so memorably and then unexpectedly died shortly thereafter, and the score by Hildur Guðnadóttir for this film continues to exploit the kind of pulsing tendencies of the first film, with a nice spread through the surround channels.

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

• From Film to Franchise: Continuing the Story (1080p; 8:26) takes a look at the decision to craft a sequel where one was arguably not really called for. That use of "franchise" might be a bit premature, or alternatively at least a bit troubling.


• An Act of War: Making Sicario: Day of the Soldado (1080p; 15:34) is a decent EPK with some good interviews.


• The Assassin and the Soldier: The Cast and Characters (1080p; 14:04) is another okay EPK with the actors talking about the characters they're playing, interspersed with lots of scenes from the film.

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

My fear is that any third Sicario outing may be a straight to video offering called something like Sicario: The Reckoning, replete with a glowering (and airbrushed) Bruce Willis on the cover. This sequel probably didn't need to be made, but I found it at least intermittently exciting. The story is both meandering and surprisingly cliché ridden, but performances are viscerally engaging throughout. Technical merits are generally first rate, though the film's unrelenting darkness keeps fine detail levels at bay at times. Recommended.