BEFORE: OK, so this is not a heist film, but it deals with Mexican drug cartels, so let's call it a crime film - I guess this has been "Crime Week", not exactly "Heist Week", but I take what I can get these days.
It's kind of funny that both Jon Bernthal and Daniel Kaluuya from "Widows" were in the original "Sicario" movie, but neither one made it to this sequel - so Manuel Garcia-Rulfo carries over from "Widows" instead.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Sicario" (Movie #2,488)
THE PLOT: The drug war on the U.S.-Mexico border has escalated as the cartels have begun trafficking terrorists across the border. To fight the war, federal agent Matt Graver returns with the mercurial Alejandro.
AFTER: Maybe this is sort of a heist film, because the U.S. CIA agents travel into Mexico to kidnap the daughter of a cartel drug-lord, and a heist is taking something valuable, so perhaps this qualifies after all.
I looked up the plot of "Sicario", which I watched at the end of 2016, as a refresher, but it wasn't necessary - the franchise has a new director, a new story, and only a couple of characters carry over from the first film. (The ones who survived, duh) And there's a new mission, instead of taking down one drug cartel, the point here is to disrupt ALL of them. Wait, that's really the old mission, just bigger. By kidnapping one cartel leader's daughter, and framing another cartel for it, they hope to spark a drug war between all the cartels, and then they'll be too busy to bring terrorists across the border.
That's right, the real point here is to stop immigration, because it turns out that when Mexico sends people, they're not sending their best. They're bringing gang members, rapists, and people who will commit suicide bombings in Kansas City. (Work with me here, OK?). It's like some screenwriter tried to predict what would be the big news headline of 2018, (because a film like this probably takes years to write and produce) and they got it ALMOST right. But it seems odd to stop the flow of incoming terrorists by sparking a drug war, when the much simpler solution, and I hate to say it, is to "Build that wall!"
There's some material here about crossing the Rio Grande into Texas, and human traffickers charging hefty fees to bring people into the U.S., but where are the detention camps for children? Where's the caravan heading up from Guatemala? Why is the Secretary of Defense getting involved in solving the problem at the border, when that should be the job of the Department of Homeland Security? (For that matter, I'm not sure that the Secretary of the Defense controls the actions of the CIA - I'll have to look that one up later.).
Anyway, the good news is that Agent Graver is back to do what he does best, which is disrupt the cartels. And he brings back his old buddy Alejandro - every time he thinks he's out, they pull him back IN - and this time, he's going to allow Alejandro to cut loose. Which is great, because I think he maybe took things a little too easy on the drug gangs the first time around. Taking down the cartels won't bring back Alejandro's family, but he doesn't let that stop him from trying.
And just as in some other notable heist films, the first operation goes fine, they kidnap the daughter and bring her back to Texas, where they then do a sting operation to make her believe that the CIA saved her from her kidnappers, which was also them. That's a bit of clever - but the operation to bring her back to Mexico and hand her off to the army goes horribly wrong, they're ambushed by their own Mexican police escorts. Which puts the CIA in a lose-lose situation, they either get shot and lose the prize, or they kill their ambushers and become the guys who kill Mexican cops. Couldn't they have just mailed her back to Mexico? Or why not have the Mexican army pick her up at the border, did this HAVE to be handled in person?
Alejandro's left on the wrong side of the border, and the only safe thing to do (and this is all relative, of course) is to sneak the girl back over the border to Texas by pretending to be an immigrant with a daughter, paying the coyote and hoping nobody makes him as a CIA agent. Murphy's Law, right? But hey, at least he got to bond with someone else's daughter for a while, and his knowledge of ASL came in handy. (OK, that's two films this week with people speaking sign language...)
The teen girl playing the kidnapped drug-lord's daughter is the suprising stand-out here, and now she's starring in that Dora the Explorer live-action movie that came out last week. If that film becomes a big hit, she could be the next superstar, stranger things have happened.
Also starring Benicio del Toro (last seen in "Avengers: Infinity War"), Josh Brolin (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Isabela Merced, Catherine Keener (last seen in "Peace, Love & Misunderstanding"), Matthew Modine (last seen in "Le Divorce"), Jeffrey Donovan (last seen in "Sicario"), Raoul Trujillo (ditto), Shea Whigham (last seen in "First Man"), Elijah Rodriguez (last heard in "The Book of Life"), Howard Ferguson Jr. (last seen in "Only the Brave"), Jake Picking (ditto), David Castaneda, Jacqueline Torres, Bruno Bichir, Arturo Maese Bernal, Ian Bohen, Faysal Ahmed (last seen in "Captain Phillips"), Sherman Allen, Christopher Heyerdahl (last seen in "Pee-Wee's Big Holiday").
RATING: 5 out of 10 rolls of duct tape
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