People really can’t seem to get enough of Taylor Sheridan. The multi-hyphenate writer-actor-director-producer is the creator of the “Yellowstone” television franchise, which mostly follow the Dutton family of ranchers over multiple generations, with a few interesting detours. While he had worked as an actor for years (even starring in an episode of “Star Trek: Enterprise”) and even earned an Academy Award nomination for his screenplay for the excellent 2016 neo-Western “Hell or High Water,” “Yellowstone” is what made Sheridan a household name. He’s since gone on to create the hit series “Tulsa King,” starring Sylvester Stallone as a mafia capo. Basically everything the man touches is streaming gold, and now another of his works is finding new eyes on home video.
Just before “Hell or High Water” showed everyone just how good Chris Pine and Ben Foster were at delivering hard-boiled western dialogue, Sheridan showed everyone just what he could do as a writer with his screenplay for the 2015 Denis Villeneuve action thriller “Sicario.” In 2017 he delivered the sequel, “Sicario: Day of the Soldado,” which is currently sitting in the Prime Video Top 10.
Sheridan’s second-best Sicario movie is getting some views
While Villeneuve unfortunately didn’t direct “Day of the Soldado,” instead handing over the reins to Italian director Stefano Sollima, Sheridan did return to write the screenplay. Our review wasn’t so hot on the film, highlighting star Benicio Del Toro’s performance while also finding the story “half-baked” — but hey, maybe people really just need to gobble up every piece of Taylor Sheridan-created content there is in order to feel complete.
“Sicario: Day of the Soldado” stars del Toro, Josh Brolin, Raoul Trujillo, and Jeffrey Donovan, all reprising their roles as CIA and CIA-trained agents working in counterterrorism, though Emily Blunt sadly does not return for the sequel. (There are plans for a third film, however, and Blunt’s FBI agent character is allegedly going to be back in action.) In “Day of the Soldado,” the government must re-team with del Toro’s assassin Alejandro in order to take down cartel members who have apparently gotten involved in smuggling terrorists, which seems like an irresponsible storyline at best when hateful rhetoric about migrants is already a massive problem in the United States (as well as around the world). Sollima didn’t want to include Blunt’s character because she was the moral compass of “Sicario” and he wanted “Day of the Soldado” to not have one, making all of the moral quandaries the film presents both on-and-offscreen more uncomfortable.
Fans looking for some Sheridan goodness can also check out the first “Sicario” film, streaming on Prime and Tubi, in case they want something a little more beloved (and a lot more entertaining.)
