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Crime Thriller

SICARIO 2: DAY OF THE SOLDADO

CAST: Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, Isabella Moner, Jeffrey Donovan

DIRECTION: Stefano Sollima

2018 is shaping up to be the year of sequels. First, it was ‘Dead­pool 2’ in May, followed by ‘The Incredibles 2’ in June. Gener­ally, sequels have a bad repute of unnecessarily trying to cash in on the popularity of their predecessors and getting away by doing pretty much the same thing all over again. But in the case of ‘Deadpool 2’ and ‘The Incredibles 2’ this didn’t apply. These follow-ups were no cheap knock-offs, and shoulder to shoul­der with their respective originals. And now ‘Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado’ gives us yet another reason to believe that a sequel can stand on its own. This second chapter retains the brooding demeanor of 2015’s “war on drugs” thriller ‘Sicario’ even though some key players from the original are missing. One nota­ble absence is director Denis Ville­neuve, who is known for his ability to elicit tension through his moody and minimalist direction.

‘Sicario 2’ has been directed by Italian filmmaker Stefano Sollima, who’s mostly known for his Italian crime drama ‘Gomorrah’ where Sollima’s anything but minimalist and draws towards excessive display of blood, gore and violence. The screenplay by Taylor Sheridan is more plot-driven this time and gives Sollima the opportunity to showcase his visual craft without departing from the original film’s muted tone.

‘Sicario 2’ opens with a series of terrorist suicide bombings in the US, which compel its government to seek the expertise of special CIA agent Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) who looks harmless in his cargo shorts and sandals but has questionable methods when it comes to infiltrat­ing his enemies. The government believes Mexican drug cartels are allowing Islamic terrorists to cross the border into US.

Graver’s given full authority to take care of the problem and play dirty if need be. He comes up with the idea of kidnapping a Mexi­can drug lord’s daughter (Isabella Moner) and make it look like the handiwork of a rival cartel leader, which would ultimately lead to a war between the cartels and favor the US government. To carry out the kid­napping, Graver recruits one of his most trusted and mysterious opera­tives, Alejandro (Benicio del Toro). But when their mission suffers a major setback—the US government finds itself at a risk of exposure for its unethical mission—Alejandro’s loyalty to his boss Graver is tested.

As the plot suggests, ‘Sicario 2’ develops more in the vein of action-adventure thrillers like the ‘Jason Bourne’ or ‘Mission Impos­sible’ series. It’s a drastic narrative change from the first ‘Sicario’ that was more a slow-burn mystery. Sol­lima handles the transition well. He’s able to orchestrate his action with a sense of unpredictability that keeps us on the edge of our seats throughout. The film is exquisitely shot by cinematographer Dariusz Wolski and hauntingly scored by Hildur Gudnadottir.

Del Toro and Brolin are two heavy­weight actors ably lifting the film on their capable shoulders. Del Toro has a hypnotic presence as Ale­jandro. The only backstory we get about Alejandro is that he used to work for the Mexican cartels before they killed his family. Graver has since been using Alejandro’s wrath for Mexican cartels to fuel his own agenda. Graver is really as a chame­leon: Mr. Nice Guy on the outside but underneath a person who can to any extreme to get what he wants.

Amid these seasoned performers is teenager Isabella Moner. Moner is feisty when we first meet her, beating up her classmate for cat calling her. As she slowly bonds with her kidnapper, Alejandro, she peels off her hardened edges and sees a father figure. Alejandro on the other hand sees his dead daughter in her.

‘Sicario 2’ benefits from the stellar acting and pulsating tension of the narrative. It may not be as cerebral and ambiguous as the first film. It does, however, intrigue and packs in plenty of surprises to make it a worthy sequel. Even when the film’s political ambitions are a bit muddled and stretched, it never fails as an action thriller.

Who should watch it?

‘Sicario 2’ is rated ‘A’ for violence and some may find it disturbing. But the film will be an ideal outing for viewers who want a taut thriller with plenty of violence.

 When the then CPN-UML and CPN (Maoist) center draft­ed the constitution in 2015, with the help of Nepali Congress, the constitution’s preamble clearly mentioned that from now on all kinds of discriminations based on class, caste, region, language and gender would end and that inclu­sive proportional representation would henceforth be the state’s guiding principle. The same con­stitution guarantees that dalits and women would be enlisted in state organs on inclusive proportional basis. Likewise, the presence of one-third women in parliament has been made compulsory. Moreover, there is a law whereby a party cannot be registered with the Election Com­mission unless women comprise at least a third of its central committee. Nepal now has a Nepal Commu­nist Party-led government, whose guiding principle is inclusive and accommodative democracy. It can even be argued that the communist leaders were chiefly responsible for including the provisions of inclusion and proportional representation in the new charter. But has the NCP adhered to its own principles?

Recently the NCP constituted its central committee, standing com­mittee and central secretariat. In the nine-member central secre­tariat, the party’s high command, there is not a single woman or dal­it. Of the nine men, seven (or 75 percent) are Brahmins, but not a single Chhetri or Madhesi has been accommodated. What could be a bigger contradiction than the fact that not a single laborer or poor farmer is represented in the central secretariat of the supposed party of the proletariat?

Lack of inclusion is even more glaring in the 45-member NCP stand­ing committee. The party’s organ responsible for all the vital deci­sion-making has just two (or four percent) women. There is a single dalit (two percent) and no Muslim. On the other hand, 96 percent of its members are male, and Brahmins take 60 percent of all seats.

The 441-member NCP cen­tral committee is bigger than the 376-member central committee of the Chinese Communist Party. But even this vast body is exclusionary. The NCP central committee has just 77 (17 percent) women. Missing the 33 percent compulsory threshold, the Election Commission should not have registered it. (But it has.)

There are just 5 percent dalits in the NCP central committee, or three times less than the required amount. On the other hand, there are 146 (33 percent) Brahmins, which is nearly three times their national popula­tion. There are eight percent Madhe­sis, two percent Muslims, 15 percent Chhetri/Thakuri and 26 percent jan­jatis. Thus all their shares have been eaten up by male Brahmins. There is also only token representation of laborers and poor farmers. The NCP central committee, it seems, has been constituted to establish the superiority of a single gender, a single caste and a single elite group.

This contradiction is seen not only in the NCP but also in different levels of governments it runs. Of the 24 federal level ministers, there are only four (17 percent) women. More­over, of the 21 ‘full ministers’ only two (9.5 percent) are women.

Twelve percent of Nepal’s population is comprised of Brah­mins while the dalit population is 13 percent. But while there is a single dalit in the cabinet of ministers, there are nine Brahmins. Likewise, of the six chief ministers of federal provinces chosen by the NCP, there is not a single woman or dalit.

At the level of mayors and head of rural municipalities, there are just 18 (four percent) women. But at the level of deputy mayors and deputy heads, there are 700 (or 93 percent) women. This happened because just like other parties the communist party too decided not to field women in the race for heads of these electoral bodies.

Is it the case that the NCP simply does not have enough women and dalits it can elect to executive posts? That is not so because the party has a large number of capable women and dalit leaders. Thus it is safe to say that they were excluded not because of their lack of ability but because they were not the favorites of powerful leaders.

When the political parties knew the inclusionary provisions would be impossible to implement, why keep them at all? Or is it the case that the constitution and the laws are not meant to be implemented but just to act as window dressing that we can showcase before the world? This big gulf between the laws and their actual implementation hint of a lack of responsibility and morality in Nepali politics.

The author is a veteran journalist and a left-leaning intellectual

Over the past few years, I have repeatedly heard from western diplomats one par­ticular observation about Nepal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) that runs along following lines: During their tenure in other countries many diplomats invari­ably end up displeasing the host government for one reason or the other. But during troubled times the foreign ministry in these host countries helps sort things out, not so in Nepal. In fact the foreign ministry in Nepal pursues perceived violations of Vienna Conventions with great zeal, they say, issuing public ulti­matums instead of delivering a démarche privately. On many occasions foreign dip­lomats in question are publicly humiliated through coordinated leaks to the media of the blow-by-blow account of the dressing down. In leaking these exchanges, MoFA officials forget that diplo­macy is an art of disagreeing, con­structive ambiguity and allowing the other side to save face. It is also about calling in quid pro quo favors in national interest when circumstances demand. Unlike in Nepal, the permanent estab­lishment in most countries take note of treatment meted out to their folks.

In an interview towards the end of this tenure in late 2011, former US Ambassador to Nepal Scott H. DeLisi had pointed out in reference to Nepal’s foreign policy outlook that ‘the world is big­ger than India and China.’ While the US ambassador was clearly worried about declining US and western influence in Nepal, he did have a point.

In the years since DeLisi’s friendly reminder, Nepal has become even more myopically focused on the two neighbors, to disastrous consequences in 2015-16 in the form the Indi­an economic blockade. As we didn’t have friends, no other traditional power sided with us to protest New Delhi’s actions, at least publicly. There was no discussion in any of the inter­national forums or any power­ful western capital of the cost of India’s punitive actions.

The eerie international silence over Nepal’s suffering had been preceded by a series of poor judgements on the part of the MoFA. We have seen a repeat of these poor judgments in the past several months—beginning with the childish reaction over the EU statement on election oversight. While Nepal reserves the right to disagree and even rubbish any statements issued by entities of foreign governments, in doing so some civility and decorum needs to be maintained. Publicly vilifying a whole bloc of 27 EU nations and their representatives may earn some brownie points at home, but it does nothing to further Nepal’s interest abroad. What it does is perpetuate certain image of Nepal and it hampers Nepal’s national interest. Take for instance the EU ban on Nepali airlines from flying into their air­space. Sure it may have started on technical grounds of Nepal’s poor safety record, but its continuation seems political.

The second instance has been the chest-thumping over the gov­ernment decision to close down the UN Department of Political Affairs Liaison Office in Kath­mandu. No one is contesting the sovereign right of government of Nepal to ask bilateral or multi­lateral entities to pack their bags and leave when their relevance has been exhausted, but it didn’t warrant so much of bragging and leaks designed to cast aspersions on the DPA activities as a whole. The government could have sim­ply thanked the UN and asked it to close shop, if it felt strongly about it.

The third instance, perhaps not directly related to MoFA but where it is nonetheless complicit with its inaction: the attempt to portray projects supported by UNDP and others at the request of government of Nepal as an ‘infiltration in the hallowed halls of the government’—through a series of leaks. The media has also done a poor job by not trying to report the other side of the story or to question the motive behind the leaks or to contextualize this assistance. In its gung-ho jingo­istic fervor, it has forgotten the basic principle of journalism—balance and some basic research. Equally troubling is the failure to distinguish between donors, bilateral agencies, multilateral agencies and NGOs.

In not coming to the legitimate defense of the bilateral and multi­lateral agencies that have signed multi-year framework agreements with the government of Nepal, clearly spelling out the areas of their support, MoFA continues to abandon its responsibility. This cements certain perception that Nepal government entities are at best unreliable and at worst feckless. And you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to calculate how this translates into Nepal’s standing or lack thereof in the international arena. How do you conduct proper diplomacy with respective capitals/headquar­ters when their representatives routinely cable not-so-positive reports on Nepal?

It was nearly three years ago when a young girl of around seven approached me in Manohara Khola of Bhaktapur to ask what reli­gion I followed. I was totally sur­prised by her question as religion seemingly meant so much to her even at her tender age. I answered ‘Hindu’ and then she said: ‘Hin­dus are Shaitaan (Satan)’. I couldn’t believe her response. Not because I was offended but because of what she had been taught.I am a Hindu by birth and by descent. It’s not something that I chose to follow but even if I had to choose a religion—at a mature age—I wouldn’t probably choose any. I hardly go to a temple. I don’t really do any puja. (Recently the only pujas I have done are on my sons’ birthdays when I call a priest at home to do the rituals for them.) I used a guide at Pashupatinath Temple when I was in my mid 20s, when I went alone to the famous temple in Kathmandu city where I grew up. I don’t know if the gods have ever punished me for being a near-atheist.

The little girl’s question and response time and again inter­rupt my thoughts, to this day. How important is religion anyway and your faith in it? How much does it guide you in today’s world, and help you stay away from wrongdoings? Is it your mind that tells you to dis­tinguish between the good and the bad or should you follow religious texts as your life’s pathfinder? From what I have understood, religions help people respect nature and its inhabitants and do no harm to any creature. But if it is so, why do fol­lowers of one religion talk evil of others, promote hatred, and even take their lives?

All the major religions of the world are in tension with each other because of how religions have been understood or interpreted by their leaders. As a student of international affairs, I have studied ‘terrorism in the name of religion’ and it seems that every religion finds a way to misinterpret its certain texts and then convince a mass to justify their wrongdoings. The Indo-Pakistan divide between Hindu and Muslims, never-ending feuds between Jews and Christians of Israel and Pales­tine, and the more recent discord in Myanmar between Buddhists and Muslims are some examples of religious intolerance.

If all the gods spoke of love, then why do their followers under­stand it differently? Should abor­tion be considered a reproductive right or a God’s gift? Should women be kept away from kitchens during their menstruation? Are sons needed for parents to go to heaven? Can men marry as many women as they want? I say killing animals should be banned but for the meat-eaters, should one group be violent just because the other group eats meat of a cer­tain animal? Those who preach about nonviolence—should they be non-vegetarian?

In a country like ours where we’ve fairly recently turned secular, we must watch out for the signs that can sow disharmony. Secularism needs to be internalized more by those who believe that by holding on to it they can condemn another religion or lure others for conversion. And it should be completely fine for one to lose his or her religion too.