'Sicario: Day of the Soldado' review: Oh, it's dark alright

How many movies is Josh Brolin going to be in this summer??

A lot of people just think of Mexico as a tourist destination, where they can go stay at a resort, lay out on the beach and drink as they much, please.

The locals know that’s not how the rest of the country actually operates. The cartels, more or less, run the country, causing violence and mayhem in just about every direction.

Denis Villeneuve first depicted that landscape and America’s relationship with it in 2015’s Sicario. The film went on to be a massive hit that, despite the ominously dark tone and difficult subject matter, most audience members loved (the fact that this didn’t win any awards that year is the fault of the Academy, not the film’s quality).

Three years later, and we’re back. No one was sure if we needed to come back — while the drug war is massive and overly complicated, Sicario itself is a pretty self-contained story that didn’t seem to be screaming for a sequel — but we’re still back.

And you know what, I’m glad we’re back too. I like this movie. I like this movie quite a bit.

This time around, Emily Blunt (SPOILERS for the first Sicario) is nowhere to be seen. To survive, this business demands the most ruthless, twisted and damned, and she decided it wasn’t for her.

Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), however, is still out there fighting the good fight (or whatever you want to call it). And after a recent terrorist attack in America that ties back to the cartels and board-running, things are about to get a whole lot more heated up.

Under new supervision from Cynthia Foards (Catherine Keener), Graver is pretty much given the green-light to do whatever it takes to go clean up this mess.

He can’t do it alone. Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro) — the double-agent hitman that Graver used in the first Sicario — is brought back into it all too. He’s still out for revenge against the people who killed his family all those years ago, so he’s more than happy to comply.

The mission itself that the two of them are given revolves around a little girl named Isabel Reyes (Isabela Moner). I won’t say what, exactly, they’re tasked to do when it comes to Isabel because it’s actually pretty horrifying and unexpected, but they basically can’t let her fall into anyone else’s hands.

Like the first Sicario, Sicario: Day of the Soldado starts off with a bang — an uncomfortable, disturbing bang that instantly lets us know what kind of movie we’re about to see. This isn’t going to be a fun watch per-say, there’s going to be some heavy stuff in here.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado is a little bit more in your face with all of it than the first film was. When I think back to the way that Sicario opened — that house with the bodies in the wall — and how Villeneuve really used the claustrophobic atmosphere and character interactions to let us know how bad things are, I start to get chills.

Day of the Soldado is a lot less subtle in that it’s just straight up terrifying. That’s not necessarily the worst thing in the world — it certainly makes us feel a certain way, which was the obvious intent — but it’s just a lot less subtle.

That’s a common thread throughout the entire movie, actually. There’s a lot of good stuff on paper here, it just can, at times, be a little heavy-handed with how it’s presented.

Like, for example. Sicario (I hate to keep comparing the two so much, but I also kind of have to in a review like this) hinted at how America and the cartels weren’t all that different in a very nuanced and delicate manner. The cartels are evil, of course, but as the film progresses you begin to see how the other side can be just as evil if they want to — the only difference is that they’re lying about it.

Director Stefano Sollima conveys similar messages in Day of the Soldado, but he does so in a way that you’re guaranteed not to miss. Brolin is a few steps away from playing a villain here, as everything is turned up a few notches this go-around.

We still get another great script from Taylor Sheridan — who wrote the first movie, Wind River and Hell or High Water. I don’t love the direction that Sicario: Day of the Soldado goes in the third act, just because they set-up some rivalries that don’t feel completely earned, but there’s still a lot of good stuff in there and I love how Sheridan utilizes the physical terrain of his films so well.

Speaking of terrain, cinematographer Dariusz Wolski also does a good job at capturing that landscape. It’s unfair to ask him to live up to Roger Deakins’ work because there can only be one Roger Deakins. Wolski, however, does his best, and while it feels somewhat flat in certain moments, there are definitely other moments that look incredible (specifically thinking about one car chase that involves dust and bullet-holes, which really blew me away).

Performance wise, Brolin and Del Toro once again knock it out of the park. They understand these characters well and know how to convey they as two-sided, complicated individuals rather than black-and-white cutouts.

Isabela Moner, for what it’s worth, is fine. There are moments when she does really well with her material, and then there are other times when it feels like she’s in a movie and she’s reading lines off a script.

Overall, Sicario: Day of the Soldado doesn’t quite live up to its predecessor, but it does, at the very least, prove that it has a reason to exist. Not everything is executed perfectly here, but it’s still worthy of the Sicario name and, you know what, I’m even going to say that I’d like a Part Three.

Watch the trailer for Sicario: Day of the Soldado here and let us know what you thought of the movie in the comments below!