"SICARIO: DAY OF THE SOLDADO"........THE TRUMPIAN DELIRIUM COME TRUE........

Sicario: Day Of The Soldado (2018)   Although we caught up with this one a few weeks ago, we could barely rouse ourselves to do a post on it......

             But we might as well cover it today......on the eve of Donald J. Trump's address to the nation, in which he'll spew out all his fantasies about the southern border.........

              For Baby Orange, this movie plays like one of his fever dreams......(the ones he has just before 5 in the morning and tweeting-time.....)

               It kicks off with Muslim terrorists who've sneaked in from Mexico, blowing up a supermarket in heartland America........nothin' like Muslims blowing up USA moms and babies to get things rolling.......even though it seems to have little or nothing to do with the rest of the film.

               The storyline here involves ruthless government operatives (Catherine Keener, Josh Brolin) who've come up with a plan to strike at the Cartels by goading them into a war with each other.......(very similar to Baby Orange gurgling with delight at Isis and Al Quaeda fighting with each other, not thinking about what would come afterwards.....)

                Into this plan they've enlisted the dangerous, shadowy and vengeful Alejandro (Benicio Tel Toro, reprising this role from the first "Sicario")........which involves the kidnapping of a Cartel kingpin's teen daughter, the very same kingpin who slaughtered Alejandro's family in the first film.

                What could possibly go wrong?    Heh, heh, heh, heh.........

                You guessed it.......pretty much everything goes south......literally and figuratively. Del Toro simmers and suffers, lots of people die......Brolin, a tough torturer of Middle East terrorists, discovers his amorality has limits, whereas Keener's cold-hearted maneuvering knows no bounds.

                 By the time this film exhausts all its nihilistic tropes and sets itself  up for a third 'Sicario' film that absolutely nobody wants or needs, we struggled to keep our eyes open.

                  And we've no real idea what the filmmakers were trying for here........other than to exploit the southern border strife to add a coating of pretension to a grim, pointless melodrama.

                So it's fitting we rid ourselves of any more thoughts on this film as we prepare for another grim, pointless melodrama.......Baby Orange's big speech on his fictitious crisis.  For the movie......
.....1 & 1/2 stars (*1/2).