SICARIO: DAY OF THE SOLDADO – A Review by Hollywood Hernandez
Sicario: Day of the Soldado is a new chapter for the 2015 movie Sicario. In the original movie Benecio Del Toro's character, Alejando, was a lawyer whose family was killed by the Mexican drug cartel. In this version he's a mercenary working for the C.I.A. to go after the Mexican drug lords through any means necessary. He helps to execute a plan to kidnap the daughter of one of the drug lords, who we never see in the movie, to create a war between rival drug lords in Mexico. The plan is devised by the C.I.A. as a way to have the cartels do their dirty work.
Josh Brolin is Matt Grarver, who's under covert orders from the Secretary of State, played by Matthew Modine, to have the drug lords in Mexico at war with each other as a way to try to slow down the tide, not of just drugs but, of human trafficking across the Texas Mexico border; where terrorists are being smuggled into the United States.
Brolin and Del Toro are great in their respective roles. They are two characters who can't be defined as "good guys" or "bad guys." They are simply on a mission and the lines between good and bad are completely erased. These are two bad hombres.
The story is very relevant today with the "war on the border" edict that has been issued by our current administration, but the story is complete fiction (to my knowledge) although it looks like something ripped from today's headlines.
"Sicario" in Spanish means "assassin" and "soldado" means "soldier", so the movie's title refers to the young men who are being trained by the cartels to be an army of assassins. It's a very dark movie and there's enough violent gun play to fill two movies. Almost every part of the movie is filled with violence but it is well acted by the characters in the movie.
Sicario: Day of the Soldado is rated "R" for violence and has a run time of 2 hours and 2 minutes. It's a really good "action/adventure" movie and on my "Hollywood Popcorn Scale" I rate it a LARGE.
