Taylor Sheridan has a long list of epic pieces curated by him, and his 92% rated masterpiece Sicario from 2015 rightfully ranks among the top names. A film that perfectly blended the action and crime genres together to shed light on drug cartel crimes— with a female protagonist in the lead, at that—it didn’t take long to become a favorite among fans.
Of course, being such a major hit, it spawned a sequel as well, Sicario: Day of the Soldado, though the second movie didn’t quite fare as spectacularly as the first one. But despite that, surprisingly enough, that maligned sequel seems to have gotten one thing better than the original flick: The action sequence, which was criticized for the first film.
Day of the Soldado gets praised for its action sequences
As much as Sicario is loved for its premise and even action sequences, Day of the Soldado more or less failed to live up to the expectations as it turned out to be less subversive and impactful than the first one, especially its narrative and overall impact, despite being a stylish, dynamic thriller. But it seems to have gotten its action better than its prequel.
Per former Navy SEAL DJ Shipley, who served in the military for 17 years and now trains people for intense battle situations through a company, the fighting action scenes in Taylor Sheridan‘s sequel were pretty realistic. And that comes from someone who can watch action scenes in movies and realistically tell what works and what doesn’t.
During a recent interview with Insider, where he rated close-quarters battle scenes in movies and television, he discussed the 2018 sequel’s action scenes in detail to share how much of those he thinks feel realistic since they are based on real-world military excursions.
For this, he looked at pretty much every aspect of how the scenes were shot. From the way the soldiers carried their guns to the deadly silence that they moved with to make sure they could get their targets without letting their presence known to anyone, Shipley examined if the scenes were actually more real and disturbing as they take place in military missions in real life than slick and polished as movies make them seem.
According to him, the filmmakers of the 2018 flick seem to have mostly gotten it right. This was because, at the end of the discussion of the scene where the military went in and killed people in a small building, the former Navy SEAL rated the movie a solid nine out of ten for just how realistic the action was in this particular scene.
Meanwhile, Taylor Sheridan’s Sicario got criticized by a combat veteran
While the sequel getting its action sequences right is a compliment indeed—especially for one criticized for lacking cinematic brilliance and being less nuanced and even ranks at only a 62% critical score on RT as compared to the original’s 92% on RT—it’s surprising because Sicario failed to get that compliment from a combat veteran.
In another video with Insider released earlier this year, Bob Keller, a former US Army Special Forces and Delta Force operator, called out the 2015 movie for being “unrealistic” while blaming it on sloppy planning. To be more precise, he said while judging the action scenes:
Unrealistic. Not gonna happen, or shouldn’t happen. If it does, you sucked at planning.
Despite the shade of basically calling it flashy, unrealistic, and tactically absurd, though, Keller still gave the movie a sweet seven out of ten for its accuracy while admitting that it’s still entertaining. That score is approve-worthy, sure, but it still lags when it comes to the maligned sequel.
But as hard as it may be to believe, it might as well be accepted that Day of the Soldado might have really pulled off the action sequences better and more realistically than the first one.
Currently, Sicario can be watched on Prime Video, while Day of the Soldado can be streamed on Netflix.
This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire
