Sightlines · reception
How Sicario: Day of the Soldado was received
2018 · Stefano Sollima · Sicario: Day of the Soldado on Sightlines
The arc
Landed in summer 2018 to a shrug-and-a-wince — solid box office, but critics called it a grim retread missing Villeneuve, Deakins, and Emily Blunt. Since then it's picked up a steady genre-fan defense as a lean, nasty border thriller that's better than a 'nobody asked for this' sequel had any right to be.
What’s debated
The forever debate: is it a worthy standalone war movie, or proof that without Emily Blunt's moral compass the Sicario world is just stylish nihilism?
Its footprint
It lives in the culture mostly as an extension of Benicio del Toro's Alejandro — the franchise's true icon — and of that rumbling Jóhannsson-descended score; its timing, a border-warfare thriller released during the summer of the 2018 family-separation headlines, became part of how people talked about it.
Where it stands
A shadow-of-the-original picture: dad-thriller comfort food for genre heads, a Letterboxd 'harsher than it is smart' punching bag for everyone else.
Did you know? Composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, who scored the first Sicario, died in February 2018 before this one; the score was taken over by his collaborator Hildur Guðnadóttir — who would win the Oscar the following year for Joker.