The rise of quality television has conditioned audiences not to expect endings so much as an ever-escalating sense of conflict, within which beloved characters can be whacked at a moment’s notice. “Sicario: Day of the Soldado” isn’t so much a sequel as a pilot for an entirely new cycle of “Sicario” movies centered on the characters of the 2015 film (minus Emily Blunt), directed by the man responsible for the gritty “Gomorrah” series for Italian TV, Stefano Sollima. His films play like dark crime thrillers, but they have much in common with what were once quaintly called oaters, when tall-hat heroes brought justice where the U.S. Over the span of four screenplays and a new Kevin Costner series, “Yellowstone” (we’ll ignore 2011’s “Vile,” the directorial debut he didn’t write, and has since all but disowned), Sheridan has established himself as a master of the modern Western, examining the lawlessness and turmoil of the frontier, such as it exists today. Rather, “Soldado” is a grim, serious-minded look at what America can do to disrupt this system - one that’s much too smart to think that a border wall will solve anything, but downright risible in its own might-makes-right politics, which reduce to a single, terse catchphrase: “No rules this time.” Tense, tough, and shockingly ruthless at times, “Soldado” doesn’t show much interest in the individuals who dream of a better life in the United States, any more than “Rambo: First Blood Part II” cared about the victims of the My Lai Massacre.
And while the separation of kids from their parents may have sparked an international human rights debate, this is not the film to settle it.
illegally, including those arriving with young children in tow.
Lionsgate dumped domestic rights early on, leaving Sony to release a film that couldn’t be more timely given the spike in attention around Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy toward any and all who enter the U.S. Considering how rare it is that an intelligent, topical action movie comes along, there might be reason to question whether “Soldado” stands a chance at the box office (Denis Villeneuve’s “Sicario” earned a modest $46.9 million in 2015, although it seems to have found its audience in the interim).
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