Directed by Stefano Sollima (2018)
Starring Josh Brolin, Benicio Del Toro, Catherine Keener
Running time 2 hours 2 minutes
MPAA rating: R

by Hunter Bush

Before this evening, before seeing it, I thought everything about Sicario: Day of the Soldado was...a bit of a mess. The sequel to a movie that doesn't need one, Sicario 2 (as it was originally marketed) traded in the numeric for a subtitle, the linguistic hodgepodge "Day of the Soldado" (soldier). Why not just pick a lane and call it either Day of the Soldier or Dia Del Soldado? It probably has to do with Sony wanting to build a franchise on the good Sicario name and worrying that an all-Spanish title would alienate audiences. That might seem pessimistic but it's obviously the direction Sony & Co. want to head in. Intellectually, that bothers me. It's an obvious, and somewhat clumsy cash-grab. But, if Sicario: Day of the Soldado is what cash-grabs look like in 2018, I'm...kind of fine with it.