Film

Sicario: Day of the Soldado

This is the sequel that strips out Emily Blunt's conscience and lets Graver and Alejandro operate with nobody left to answer to. Colder, blunter and more openly nihilistic than the first film, it trades Villeneuve's painterly dread for propulsive border-war momentum. Watch it for velocity and brutality, not moral clarity — a harder, uglier machine.

TMDb rating6.9

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Sicario2015

The film this one is a sequel to, and arguably the better movie — Villeneuve's dread, Deakins' desert light, and Emily Blunt as the outraged conscience Soldado deliberately removes.

But Slower and more restrained than the sequel; if you came for pure action, you might find it too patient.

Sicario poster

Traffic2000

Soderbergh's sprawling, Oscar-winning drug-war mosaic, with Benicio del Toro giving the performance that made him a fixture of this exact genre. One enormous, unwinnable war, told from every side.

But Structurally busy — three intercut storylines demand patience rather than adrenaline, and it shows its age a little.

Traffic poster

No Country for Old Men2007

The Coens' border-set thriller, where violence arrives with total indifference to morality or plot convenience. Same wasteland, same creeping sense that nobody's really in control.

But Bleaker and slower-burning than Soldado, with an ending some viewers find frustratingly anticlimactic.

No Country for Old Men poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Léon: The Professional1994

Alejandro's guarded, near-paternal bond with the kidnapped teenager Isabel is Soldado's most human thread — Léon builds an entire film, in a wildly different register, around that same figure: a professional killer quietly becoming a protector.

A hardened, near-silent killer forms a wary, protective bond with a vulnerable girl caught in adult violence — the emotional core buried inside Soldado's Alejandro and Isabel, given a whole film instead of a subplot.

But Tender and stylised where Soldado is cold and brutal; some will find the central relationship's intimacy uncomfortable rather than moving.

Léon: The Professional poster
More like this (8)

Narcos2015

If you want the cartel war stretched over hours instead of two, this is the obvious next stop — Escobar's rise and fall told with the same procedural, morally compromised energy.

But Later seasons lose some of the early run's grip once the central figure and focus change.

Narcos poster

Zero Dark Thirty2012

Bigelow's account of the hunt for bin Laden shares Soldado's fascination with what a democracy quietly permits in the dark, filmed with the same clinical tension.

But It's a manhunt procedural, not an action film — long stretches of surveillance and bureaucracy rather than gunfire.

Zero Dark Thirty poster

The Counselor2013no page yet

Cormac McCarthy's only original screenplay, all cartel dread and unbeatable evil, delivered in dialogue so stylised it borders on operatic. A cult object for philosophically minded crime fans.

But Widely mocked on release for that dialogue; it's more meditation than thriller, and some find it simply bad.

Savages2012no page yet

Oliver Stone's trashier, sun-bleached cartel war, with del Toro again as a terrifying enforcer. Pulpier, glossier, and more willing to just be fun than Soldado ever is.

But Tonally uneven — swings between romance and ultraviolence in ways that don't always land.

Man on Fire2004

Denzel Washington as a burnt-out operative dragged into Mexico's violence to protect a child, shot by Tony Scott at his most kinetic and unhinged. Pure vengeance cinema.

But Scott's hyperactive style — whip pans, subtitles as graphics — hasn't aged gently for every viewer.

Man on Fire poster

Miss Bala2019no page yet

An American woman gets pulled into cartel machinery on the wrong side of the border, in a tense, female-led thriller sharing Soldado's queasy sense of institutions using ordinary people as pawns.

But A remake of a much-loved Mexican original, and noticeably less brutal or morally daring than that version.

Touch of Evil1958

Long before cartels and drone strikes, Welles was already using the US-Mexico border as a stage for institutional rot and moral collapse — Soldado is still, decades later, telling the story of a border where the rules quietly stop applying.

Orson Welles' noir about corruption on the US-Mexico border proves this obsession — the border as a lawless, morally rotten in-between zone — is nearly seventy years old, and shot with astonishing control.

But Black-and-white, theatrical, and paced like classic-era Hollywood — a real gear change from modern border thrillers.

Touch of Evil poster

Cartel Land2015

Soldado imagines shadowy operatives fighting a dirty, off-the-books war against cartels; Cartel Land shows you the real thing — actual vigilantes and self-appointed soldiers doing exactly that, with none of the polish to make it thrilling.

A documentary that rides with an actual vigilante militia fighting Mexican cartels — the paramilitary chaos Soldado fictionalises, filmed as it genuinely happened, with no script to soften any of it.

But Unglamorous and morally exhausting in a way fiction can dodge; there's no propulsive score to carry you through.

Cartel Land poster

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