Seven years after Sicario: Day of the Soldado, the franchise returns with a third installment simply titled Sicario (2025) — and it’s a chilling, morally complex descent into the darkest corners of the drug war. This isn't a reboot or a rehash. It’s a reckoning.
Directed by Stefano Sollima, returning from the second film, the third entry reunites Benicio del Toro as Alejandro and Josh Brolin as Matt Graver, now disillusioned veterans of America’s covert war on cartels. The story begins with a brutal massacre on the U.S.–Mexico border that signals a new, more dangerous player in the game: a coalition of Eastern European arms dealers partnering with fragmented cartel factions. The CIA suspects Russian interference — but as always in Sicario, the truth is murkier than intel.
The core of the film is Alejandro, who has gone underground since faking his death at the end of Soldado. When a teenage girl — believed to be his late daughter’s surviving cousin — is abducted in a cross-border ambush, he resurfaces to settle scores and seek redemption. But what begins as a rescue turns into a journey through betrayal, ghost alliances, and the realization that no war has an endpoint — only escalation.
Unlike the muscular chaos of Day of the Soldado, Sicario (2025) returns to the atmospheric dread of Denis Villeneuve’s original. Long, suffocating silences, aerial drone shots of dead land, and a haunting score (this time composed by Max Richter) paint a world where every decision feels poisoned. Violence is swift, realistic, and often soul-crushing — not stylized, but cold and surgical.
Brolin brings a wearier, more introspective edge to Graver, who starts to question the chain of command he once obeyed without flinching. Del Toro, once again, is magnetic — his performance balances controlled fury with human vulnerability. The new addition of Isabela Merced as the abducted girl adds emotional depth and stakes, creating a surrogate father-daughter arc that avoids sentimentality and instead highlights trauma, survival, and resilience.
The film doesn’t offer easy answers — nor does it pretend the drug war is winnable. What it does offer is a brutally honest, tightly executed thriller that asks: When you've crossed every line, who gets to come back?
