'Sicario: Day of the Soldado' isn't making any political statements, but Benicio Del Toro will
In its tense and gritty depiction of the FBI’s battle against a Mexican drug cartel, the 2015 thriller Sicario also commented on political issues, such as the U.S.’s long war on drugs and the militarization of police.
Considering that it went into production in the same month that Donald Trump was elected president, one might think that the sequel, Sicario: Day of the Soldado, would layer on similar commentary on the increasingly heated U.S.-Mexico relations. Not so, though, according to star Benicio Del Toro, whose character, operative Alejandro Gillick, moves to the forefront of the franchise in Part 2, whose plot builds from a CIA discovery that Mexico’s cartels are smuggling terrorists across the border.
“It borrows from things that are actually happening that are not resolved in the world of the war of drugs,” Del Toro told Yahoo Entertainment recently (watch above). “It’s not necessarily making a statement in regards to these issues.”
However, the Puerto Rico-born actor will comment on the current state of U.S. immigration policies and those it affects.
“You need to respect the laws of countries, whether you go into a country legally or illegally. The laws are there, they should be respected,” said Del Toro, who won an Oscar for 2000’s Traffic, a drama set on the border that touched on similar issues as the Sicario films. “But at the same time, I think there’s a lot to say about some people who have been here for a long time and have been law-abiding citizens.
“I know a couple people who’ve been arrested, and they’ve been working people for years. They came here when they were 2 years old; they only speak English. I speak better Spanish than they do. And they’ve been put in jail. And it cost a lot of money to get them out. They walk around with a bracelet. But these are good people who’ve been working all their lives.”
Sicario: Day of the Soldado is now in theaters. Watch the trailer:
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