Sicario Films (Denis Villeneuve/Stefano Sollima, 2015/2018)

[domino harvey]

"Quick, people hate our new title, so we need something they'll hate more!"

[mfunk9786]

That is some da share z0ne-level artwork right there

[lacritfan]

I didn't know Robert Rodriguez has a new movie coming out. Does skeleton man kill all the From Dusk till Dawn vampires?

[Big Ben]

That is some da share z0ne-level artwork right there

Don't you be knocking Admin's shitposts!

(The poster is fucking terrible I agree.)

[tenia]

It looks like a poor homemade bootleg cover of a cheaply-produced PS1 game.

[flyonthewall2983]

Iron Maiden bootleg

[Ribs]

[Big Ben]

It looks like a tattoo I would have gotten when I was wasted in High School.

[Soothsayer]

Ed Hardy has moved from clothing to film poster design.

[Ribs]

Shockingly, Day of the Solado is getting positive notices

[tenia]

I'm surprised but not so much. The 2 Sollima's directing efforts were both overall OK (including the 2 TV shows Romanzo Criminale and Gomorra), and Taylor Sheridan currently seems very successful with his scripts.

[swo17]

Shockingly, Day of the Solado is getting positive notices

Day of the Flooring

[DarkImbecile]

I caught Soldado a week ago and I still don't quite know for sure how I feel about it; I certainly don't think it's anywhere near as good as Villeneuve's original, and came out of it very lukewarm on the whole... and yet Sheridan's script again subverts structural expectations and does just enough to deviate from the reactionary jingoism flirted with during the first 30 minutes that I oddly kind of want to see it again to confirm that - and how - it doesn't work.

The film digs a deep hole for itself with an opening sequence featuring

Spoiler

ISIS operatives being smuggled among migrants across the US-Mexico border and a deeply exploitative depiction of a suicide bombing in Kansas City

that could serve as masturbation material for the most paranoid of Trump die-hards, and then spends the entirety of its remaining running time trying to dig itself out by undercutting the original premise at nearly every turn in ways that those inclined to conflate the catalyst with reality would almost certainly miss or misinterpret, partially because Sollima seems more enamored with the militarist adventurism of Josh Brolin's character than does Sheridan's script.

Spoiler

To cite one example of the script/direction divide, Brolin's character states outright that the US purposefully provoked and facilitated the post-invasion Iraqi civil war in order to prevent unified opposition to the occupation, which could be a pretty subversive and controversial moment but is totally glossed over in favor of macho posturing and exposition.

Much like the first film, this one takes mid-narrative turn away from the apparent plot and character objectives, and then does so again toward the end, abandoning multiple threads in order to refocus on a smaller, weirder sequence of events that was actually intriguing enough to pull me out of active dislike of the film and into mild bemusement. The final moments of the film are such an odd and ambiguous non-sequitur that I've thought about them every time the film pops into my head, while none of the bigger, flashier moments have managed to linger.

Soldado may not be a particularly good standalone movie (aside from Del Toro's really stellar adoption of a white Texan accent for about 15 minutes), but I'm intrigued enough by the possibility of it serving as the odd bridge entry in a trilogy to be interested in seeing the series continue.

[Ribs]

Spoiler

I cannot believe the last line of the movie is literally “So you want to be a Sicario?”

[McCrutchy]

"Coming this Fall to the FOX broadcast network..."

[therewillbeblus]

I did something I almost never do and turned off the sequel which just felt so egregious in its cartoonishness (as I expected from the dumb trailer where Benicio fires his handgun like a machine gun an unnecessary amount of times into a target) so I can't comment on its overall merit. I also can't say I entered this impartial though, as the first film had one of the most disappointing third acts I've ever seen, to the point where it destroyed the value for me in the excellent first two thirds.

Sicario embraced the grey world of political macrosystems better than any film in recent memory. By focusing on the fish-out-of-water individual in Blunt, we got to see her journey when exposed to the complex world of ethical compromise, contrasting nicely with a desensitized Brolin, and the exploration of her movement through this shady milieu was constantly exhilarating as if we are being sucked into a black hole of brutal truth that we don't want to swallow either, the risk of doing so in straying too far from the morals we hold dear. Del Toro as the mysterious wild card who is detached enough to play by the rules but with an obscure stake that emotionally grounds him to provide just enough empathy is perfect as is. He stands at a cautious distance while prioritizing his own mission: an enigma that retains a glimpse of humanity (ironically as the most directly violent vessel) between Blunt and Brolin, literally becoming the grey hazy center of this complex work.

So it was to my complete surprise and immense frustration when the narrative completely shifts to give us a left field micro-ending to Del Toro's mission

Spoiler

The transformation from a parallel macro-exploitation/micro-existentially shattering tale of a person upended from their coddled-reality and forcible stripped of their protective facades to meet that macro-reality... into a micro-revenge story(?!) is just sloppy writing, and completely unearned. Del Toro's character was drawn to be in a limbo, like a dark twist on Sisyphus' absurdist existentialism, just going along on a mission that may never end for a purpose that gets muddled in the chaos of moral ambiguity, but here he is given an arc, and it's the end of a long (twenty years or something) arc, going right to the source of the family who killed his. Why am I supposed to care? Who are these villains to me? Del Toro has delivered a phenomenal performance in embodying that grey space and now we are supposed to blindly support the narrative detour as if he's been an empathetic surrogate all along. Yeah, the way he kills the family members off in front of the guy is a creative style of comeuppance I guess, but this felt like a great movie was abandoned in favor of the end of another which had no business being there. I remember leaving the theatre feeling offended at what was done to the audience, and whoever decided to take the story in this direction must have been so set on their own genius idea of watching Del Toro kill off the children of a drug lord in front of him that they decided to include it at all costs, and a huge cost this was.

In talking with people for years after this came out, I've felt alone in how much this bothered me, but it felt disrespectful, self-gratifying and paradoxical by taking a challenging, vague, expansive idea on how moral ambivalence coats the systems that affect us all, and threw it in the trash for an easy, specific, contrived scene that was just 2 kewlll to leave behind. I'd love to hear a defense of it and change my mind, because I desperately want to love this movie for so many reasons that click with my own worldview, but I begrudgingly cannot overcome this chip and feel nothing but animosity towards the cohesive whole.

[nitin]

twbb, I am not sure I read the scene in question as being supportive of Del Toro’s character’s actions. I read it as more of a ‘everyone’s got their reasons’ viewpoint taken to its nihilistic extreme. It probably glorifies his actions in the staging but that’s probably true of the style in most crime movies.

[therewillbeblus]

I don’t think it’s coming out with the intention of being supportive either, certainly his methods fall into that grey space the rest of the film does - committing an action based in valid emotions but executed in ‘immoral’ ways - and is probably a big reason why it was included to show this morally ambiguous aura clouding everything from macro down to micro. Still that doesn’t change anything about the effects of the shift. I don’t think the film’s ‘support’ of him is what matters - it’s that we are ripped from one movie and placed into another in a way that doesn’t feel organic or self-aware, as if Sheridan is saying that’s how movies work and I’ve just been watching the wrong ones my whole life.

[nitin]

I agree that the third act focuses on the least interesting of all options that were available but I guess it does not ruin the film as much for me as it does you. Plus the epilogue does bring it back full circle to Blunt even if it might be too little too late if you have already been put off with where the movie went by that point.

[therewillbeblus]

Yeah I honestly have yet to meet anyone who is as put-off by that third act as I am, which I don't understand, but that's why I'm asking for a defense. I actually do like the epilogue a lot and think it's a perfect cap to Blunt now coming face to face with the 'grey' moral compromise personified by a more emotionally-accessible neutral party in Del Toro, which allows for her final choice to engage in non-action bridging into that commonality of humanity perfectly. I just wish there was another avenue to give his character that depth without derailing the narrative that way.

[Magic Hate Ball]

Just caught Sicario, and really loved it. With regards to the third act, I think it makes sense in regards to the concept of the personal being political, and vice versa.

Spoiler

Throughout the film, Blunt has a kind of Eyes Wide Shut journey where she's brought face to face with the fact that she's basically just a walking bureaucratic approval stamp for a mammoth system of violence. In the tunnel she proves herself to be not just useless, but a liability, which makes it even funnier when she comes back out demanding answers. Her entire arc is to be punished and humiliated for thinking that the system of law enforcement operates at an emotional remove, even though she herself joins the task force because she wants to seek vengeance. Del Toro, on the other hand, is there specifically for the purpose of vengeance, and he accomplishes exactly what he was hired for, and even adds a little flourish of cruelty. He and Blunt both accomplish what they were hired for, but one is crushed and the other enjoys great personal satisfaction. It's kind of a mean joke, but I think it works.

[flyonthewall2983]

Christopher McQuarrie and a returning Taylor Sheridan are developing a third chapter