Directed by Stefano Sollima

Written by Taylor Sheridan

Starring Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, Isabela Moner

Sicario 2 has one of the more unbelievable endings I’ve seen in a movie recently. Like you REALLY gotta suspend your disbelief for this one. And then maybe, just maybe, you may enjoy the ride. The trailers looked promising, but also showed us that Emily Blunt and Denis Villeneuve were missing time around, which appeared as two huge red flags in my mind. The film would have to be carried by Benicio and Brolin, and carry it they did.

It begins with a simple title card explaining human smuggling across the US-Mexico border is rampant. We learn later that it is far more profitable for the cartels to smuggle people across than drugs like cocaine. In some rather weak opening sequences the border patrol chases down some people trying to cross the border, and some of them are revealed to be Islamic terrorists. One blows himself up alone and doesn’t really harm anyone. Later on several of them suicide bomb a grocery store. I felt extremely uncomfortable watching these scenes, not the least of which because it felt to me that the movie was cheaply exploiting a stereotype without delving into any deeper meaning. It’s bad.

Anyway, these incidents give the Secretary of State leeway to expand the US goverment’s definition of terrorism to include the Mexican cartels. Now they can expand their efforts and loosen their morality to combat them. Brolin’s Matt Graver is called in to do what’s necessary (I dig his earlier scene where he interrogates a guy in Africa, chewing gum all the while and totaling owning it). They decide the best thing to do is instigate a war among all the cartels and to pit them all against one another. Their infighting will make it easier for the US to defeat them.

Graver knows he has all the room to get dirty, so he gets the help of his old friend Alejandro (Benicio) who was the effective Sicario in the first movie. I cherished all the scenes Brolin and Benicio had together, they’re just two vets who can make any scene watchable. You can tell how much fun they’re having playing these seemingly amoral wolves.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. Carlos Reyes is the head of one of the major cartels. His youngest kid is 16 years old. The plan is to kidnap the kid under the guise as another cartel. “If you want to start a war, kidnap a prince. The king will start it for you”. But surprise, Reyes’ kid is a girl (this is important), and they take her on her way home from school anyway. Her name is Isabela (played by Isabela Moner, very good here). Her opening scene is a schoolyard fight with another girl, and let’s just say you immediately know her character in these brief moments. There’s also a pretty funny encounter with her school dean afterwards.

But back to her father Carlos Reyes. He’s the one who ordered the hit on Alejandro’s daughter. Alejandro slaughtered the man who murdered his daughter along with his entire family in the first movie. So Alejandro still has unfinished business.

There’s a lot of things that happen around the middle section of the movie. It moves slowly but usually there’s enough to keep your attention. I won’t go into too much detail, but during all this we are also introduced to a young boy who must be around high school age who is shown the life of smuggling people across the border by his cousin. I imagine a lot of younger people find themselves in these kinds of situations. Desperate for money with no other options, or sometimes it’s just a bad choice. An early shot behind a school bus show us where this kid’s path in life tears. We know he will be integral to the plot later on.

The director this time around was Stefano Sollima, who has directed episodes for tv shows I’ve never heard of before. He seems to have a cool grasp for movement, there’s a bunch of scenes that are just played out from one camera. They really do not work in those opening sections I mentioned before, but are effective later on. But Taylor Sheridan did return as writer for this one, and his script is a good one. He’s a strong writer, he’s got a knack for simple but to the point conversations that stick with you. And that’s critical in a movie like this, otherwise you end up like Zero Dark Thirty, cluttered with bureaucratic jargon that no one remembers. Fuck that shit.

So much of the movie is told and then focused on Isabel. I think during one pivotal action scene it was a mistake to linger on her. But it was well shot so what do I know. Isabela Moner was a great choice for this role, as a frightened but tough crime lord’s daughter thrown into situation after situation that will surely leave her with PTSD. She’s smart too, and slowly pieces together things about her surroundings that a normal 16 year couldn’t. I guess it helps being Carlos Reyes’ daughter.

Through details in the story I won’t divulge, Alejandro and Isabel end up in the desert together. There are many great parallels and reversals in storytelling that keep us invested in movies. Here’s another: Alejandro is now confronted with safely escorting the daughter of the man who ordered the death of his own daughter. And what does he do with her? Why, he treats her as if she were his own. And you can see it in Benicio’s eyes that he genuinely wants her to return home safe. Crazy huh?

They encounter a deaf man, and the scene here in sign language may be the best damn thing I saw all night, lending so much value and insight in Alejandro’s character. This is what any sequel should do: continue the story of returning characters while deepening their backstories without repeating what we have seen. Further greatness is another brief call between Alejandro and Graver over walkie talkies. It lets us peek ever so quietly into a relationship that is deeper than either of these two films. In the background of Alejandro’s end we hear wolves and coyotes howling in the night.

You’re probably wondering, I suppose, what that unbelievable ending I talked about is. Of course I won’t spoil it, except to say it involves one character recognizing another at a time and place that is most convenient to the detriment of the other. Even though this character has only seen the other ONE time earlier on, ever so briefly. And although the movie makes a point that these two will cross paths again, it is impossible, just impossible that they recognize the other near the end. Peering through a glass window in the dead of night across quite some space to someone wearing a hat and covered up AND BACKLIT BY A BUS. It’s impossible, I can’t believe it.

Suspend your disbelief for that moment, and you’ll be treated to another. One of the most insane turnarounds of the year, the whole audience gasped, freaking out at the movie’s key revelation. It’s an awesome one though, and if you’ve made it this far in story invested I think you can buy it. And if you buy that , then the film’s final minute won’t bother you. Because it ends at a place that, believe me, no one saw coming, and leaves the door way, way open for Sicario 3. But hell, I’ll watch that.

Another thing, I had no idea what Soldado meant until I googled it just now. It means Soldier, so the film’s full title is Hitman: Day of the Soldier. And it’s no wonder, they say the word “soldier” about a dozen times in this movie. I can’t believe I didn’t realize it sooner. I’m also pretty stupid because I thought Emily Blunt didn’t return due to scheduling conflicts, or pregnancy (she now has two young kids with John Krasinski I think). But no, Taylor Sheridan made the decision to continue this part of the story without her. He says,

“Her arc was complete … I couldn’t figure out a way to write a character that would do her talent justice … Look what she went through. It was a difficult role. Here I write this lead character and then I use her as a surrogate for the audience. I make her completely passive against her own will so the audience feels the same impotence that a lot of law enforcement officers feel, I drag her through hell, and betray her in the end. It was an arduous journey for the character, and for Emily. That character had arc.”

And it makes perfect sense. And walking out of Sicario 2 I knew that Alejandro and Graver had enough of a presence and relationship to justify its existence. The first Sicario was a really good movie, great at many parts, with Blunt and Benicio as the highlights. But that film carried a much darker and disturbing subtext (hint: Blunt is the only woman in the whole movie, surrounded by wolvish men who control her fate). Sicario 2 I would say is good, uneven at its inception, and some slow parts later on. But if you like Benicio and Brolin you should go. Crazy to think Brolin was Thanos and Benicio was in Star Wars recently. Kinda blows my mind when I see the two of them speaking to each other onscreen. What range these guys have, what a time to be alive at the movies