Rent Sicario 2: Soldado (2018)

Engrossing thriller - Sicario 2: Soldado review by Alphaville

This superior sequel is an exercise in tension. The CIA starts a Mexican drug cartel war as retribution for a terrorist attack. It’s complicated, with plot and dialogue so dense that you may even find subtitles a help to understand the military small talk. The plot gradually focusses in on agents Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro, who find themselves being forced by circumstances onto opposing sides. There’s plenty of action, although the tone, underpinned by a grumbling score, is tense rather than gung-ho. You might wish the leads would occasionally show a bit more fear or excitement, but pay close attention and you’re in for a thrilling couple of hours.

Very good but .............. - Sicario 2: Soldado review by JD

Loved Sicario 1 and Sicario 2 is almost as good.

We missed Emily Blunts character but the other two leads return and develop their roles.

It is very spectacular and violent, and the action scenes are excellent.

Sadly their is a huge continuity fault near the end, two in fact , that almost spoil the movie and I cannot understand why anyone involved in the production did not spot them at the time.

Inferior sequel - Sicario 2: Soldado review by TH

Lacks the menace and desperation of the Mexican state through drug cartels and there dealings...the plot is underwhelming where it switches more from drug dealing to human trafficking crossing the border into the States. The overall plot for the CIA to kidnap a cartels daughter and then leave her in another cartels land to create an all out war and not at any point can the CIA be connected even through the elimination of it's own operatives seemed a bit far fetched. As expected well acted from Brolin and Del Torro with his usual sinister emotionless features as the Colombian operative and still laying it on thick about his past...watchable but not up to the first film even through it's cinematography.

A brutal & violent sequel, losing none of its power with an amazing Del Toro - Sicario 2: Soldado review by TB

The first Sicario was amazing, a bolt from the blue. Following Emily Blunt's FBI agent, who is paired up with Josh Brolin's deeply immoral CIA officer & Benicio Del Toro's unstable Alejandro, it was a slow-burning & incredible thriller looking at cartels in Mexico. For this sequel, whilst Blunt passed on revisiting this world again, Brolin & Del Toro return, along with the scriptwriter Taylor Sheridan. And whilst this film doesn't quite match it's predecessors heights, it is still a bloody good film and just as brutal as the first one.

The film reunites us with Matt Graver, who is called on by the US government after a terrorist attack in a supermarket kills multiple people. The dug cartels are suspected of smuggling the terrorists into the US, so Graver is ordered to actively attack them, as well as trying to start conflicts between the rival cartel's so that they take each other out. Graver contacts Alejandro in order to assist with this mission.

The only issue I actually have with this film, which did cross over into I felt questionable territory, was the radical Islamic terror theme, the events having been set in motion by the suicide bombing & connecting it to the cartels smuggling the terrorists across the border. With the political situation as it was in 2018 (a Trump presidency which was infamously demonising migrants as well as deliberately splitting up families & putting children in cages,) I felt that this storyline was pouring more petrol onto what was already an obscenely awful human tragedy.

But as for the story itself, it was great. Del Toro in particular has found a character as good as Dario from Licence to Kill, and seems to revel in the chance to literally be a total psychopath who in this case is on the right side of the law. Whilst I did miss Blunt's character, I do feel that the filmmakers have successfully managed to move the story on to a different level with different facets being able to be explored. In the first film, Blunt was us as the viewer, looking into this horrible world from the outside. Whereas now we are deep inside that world, accompanying Graver & Alejandro as they cause carnage.

This is an excellent sequel & different in all the right ways. It still however has the same amazing ability to create almost unbearable tension combined with incredible action.

Energetic movie - Sicario 2: Soldado review by HM

OK so some don't think it is as good as the first film. Well, it isn't a copy of the first film so no need to worry, this is a good thriller with plenty of action and entertainment; just take it as it comes and you won't be disappointed. it kept me interested all the way through. Go for it!

Same as the first one - Sicario 2: Soldado review by JW

Lacks it imagination in building on the story of the first one. The ending feels more like a set up for 3 rather than an ending. Guns, a plan to get the bad guys fight amongst themselves, still entertaining and has pace though. The renegade characters seem less renegade and more under the instruction of the powers that be.

Still a good mindless night ?? n.

As the credits came up at the end, I was left wondering whether there was a point to the film at all - Sicario 2: Soldado review by Schrödinger's Cake

The first Sicario film was an ok example of the action genre, mostly as Emily Blunt made it interesting to watch. This follow-up feels like a pile of cutting-room snippets, knitted together into a film. And due to this, it frankly seems to be missing any kind of joined-up narrative to hold it all together.

As the credits came up at the end, I was left wondering whether there was a point to the film at all, other than as just another cynical cash-in, as so many middle-trilogy films seem to be …