Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018)

Director: Stefano Sollima

Writer: Taylor Sheridan

Composer: Hildur Guanadottir

Starring: Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, Isabela Moner, Jeffrey Donovan, Catherine Keener, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Matthew Modine, Shea Whigham, Elijah Rodriguez

More info: IMDb

Plot: The drug war on the U.S.-Mexico border has escalated as the cartels have begun trafficking terrorists across the US border. To fight the war, federal agent Matt Graver re-teams with the mercurial Alejandro.

My rating: 7.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Yes.

This sequel to the excellent SICARIO (2015) does it right.  It re-teams some of the main characters and puts them in different situations which tests them and put them in a somewhat different place at the end.  Sure, it sets things up for another movie (goodie) but it does it in a way that shows that writer Sheridan isn't content with telling the same story.  Neither film relies on the other so you can watch either without feeling like you're missing anything.  I really dig the setting.  There's something fresh about it.  Director Sollima (son of Sergio) does a wonderful job in continuing in the sensibility of Villeneuve.  I dig the foreign touch given to both of these films, lending them a faint taste of artistic styling.  There's not as much action as in the first film but there are still plenty of tense moments and they're handled very well.   Del Toro has a bigger role this time and he's just all kinds of great.  Isabela Moner knocks it out of the park, too.  I'm looking forward to watching both of these pictures again as well as the sure-to-happen sequel.