Sicario: Soldado Day & # 39; Movie Review: More carnage, less morality



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To begin, the sequel to Sicario of 2016 is not in the same essential viewing category as the original – that is what happens when we remove the inspired director Denis Villeneuve of the equation. Ditto actress Emily Blunt who has humanized the secret drug action of the original as a FBI field agent in conflict and is AWOL here. The director Stefano Sollima, who was raised on Italian television ( Gomorrah ), was brought to stage a suite filled with ultra-violence, which he is very good at – are the moral currents that escape him.

The good news is that deep and caustic dialogue is a specialty of the return of screenwriter Taylor Sheridan ( Hell or High Water ). Josh Brolin is back in the shoes of Matt Burn, a shady federal agent wearing cargo shorts and sandals, whose job this time is to launch a war between the Mexican drug cartels. The idea is to kidnap Isabel Reyes (Isabela Moner), the cartel's 16-year-old daughter, and to make her believe that her narco rivals did it. In this way, he reasons, the wicked destroy themselves while America reap the benefits. Is someone better than Brolin to laugh bitterly about the worst of human behaviors? And Benicio Del Toro gets up again as Alejandro Gillick, an ally of the US secret operations for throwing the screws at those who profit from drugs, as well as smuggling Islamic terrorists from the other side from the border.

Sicario: Soldier's Day comes to the movies as the world is super-focused on Trump's policy of separating illegal Mexican migrants from their children – many of whom have been sent to detention centers such as McAllen, Texas, a border town for this movie. Obviously, the sequel was written before these events. And yet Soldado, intentionally or unintentionally, gives credence to POTUS 's rancid argument that a policy of zero tolerance against illegal immigrants is intended to protect American citizens from harm. criminal element. In a first scene, Sollima shows a mother and a daughter in an American department store shaking with fear just before an Islamic State suicide bomber puts his hand to the pulp. He plays as a kind of trumpet that is used to sell tickets for Hollywood entertainment. The lines are crossed here.

The film finds a dramatic terrain a little more defensible when it starts with Sellick and the daughter of the pivot of the cartel. Isabel quickly catches that she is a pawn in an American game. It is clear that she is tough: in an earlier scene, Isabel beats another girl at school to call her a "bading narco". The growing awareness of the teenager of his place in this larger world is strongly portrayed by Moner, who is a real find. And Del Toro is unmatched in suggesting what remains of a soul in a warrior determined to get the child out of those who left him without a child safely across the border and into the states. . This is a rare reference to honor in a geopolitical landscape that has forgotten the meaning of the term.

Back home, Burn is beaten by her boss, Cynthia Foards (an actress Catherine Keener) – not for killing the Mexican police during Isabel's kidnapping, but to be taken to that. The Secretary of Defense (Matthew Modine) is as furious as the President; they want the problem to disappear, with the people who caused it. Burn, in conflict for one minute, follows orders. What happens next opens the way to the last act of Soldado and it is undoubtedly the most cynical portrait of American ideals corrupted for years. Maybe we really get the movies we deserve.

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