Not as good as the first, the story makes little sense

generally i like the Sicario formula, the action scenes are great, the cinematography is great, music is great, Benicio is great, the "good guys have a dark side" writing is great

the plot of the first movie remains plausible and somewhat grounded, but Soldado's does not, it's so convoluted it sounds like a truther conspiracy theory come to life, and the kicker is that about 75% into the movie the entire plan is abandoned because they suddenly found out that the terrorists were from New Jersey so the US gov is no longer interested in siccing the cartels on each other, OOPS. that's when the movie starts falling apart

also the scene where our protagonists meet the Mexican Federal Police guy in the mall food court who ends up arranging the escort that betrays the operatives. so, this guy who seems to be really trusted because he was included into the black op, but he can't even make sure that his own guys aren't cartel? and when the Defense Secretary asks our protagonists why they couldn't just hold the girl within Mexico, they give some bs excuse about lack of infrastructure. why would a rival cartel take a hostage to the US in the first place?

and then the arc with the teen smuggler who is somehow allowed to abandon the cartel vehicle and then is later recruited by our CIA protagonist? which seems to be a set-up for the third movie or something but it's so out of place and unnecessary to the main plot

it's like they're running out of ideas; going the jihadist route seems to be another round of fan service piled on top of a franchise that was already fulfilling American audiences' fantasy of US forces smoothly taking out dangerous Mexican criminals. granted, the screenplay had already been written before the comparable real life events in El Paso where a Trump supporter is the one killing people in a superstore, rather than the islamists we see in the movie, so watching this movie after that fact makes it a little jarring but i'm still willing to suspend my disbelief if the rest of the story is good, yet the Islamist subplot is never expanded upon and quickly discarded, it just doesn't work. it's simply there to shock & anger the audience in the beginning

i don't believe Taylor Sheridan was expecting to write more than one Sicario film but rather that he was forced into writing one that continues the stories of previous characters while involving them in even wackier political narratives, and the sequel suffers because of it, it feels like the first movie was natural, the second one is not. they're dragging along the "Alejandro's family was killed" subplot and associating new cartel leaders with the incident even though he already got his revenge in the first movie