The much-anticipated follow-up to 2015’s Sicario, which earned three Oscar nominations, premiered at Cannes, and banked $78.5 million worldwide, finally hit theatres this week. Smashing box office expectations with a $19 million opening weekend, Sicario: Day of the Soldado features performances from two notable New York Film Academy (NYFA) community members: NYFA Board Member and Master Class Lecturer Matthew Modine, and NYFA Acting for Film alum and Guest Speaker Manuel Garcia-Rulfo.
Led by returning stars Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin as a loose-canon team, Italian director Stefano Sollima’s Soldado pulls no punches in a controversial and bloody tale that centers on terrorism, drug cartels, and human trafficking at the U.S./Mexico border.
Matthew Modine, who has been called “one of the best, most adaptable film actors of his generation” by legendary NY Times film critic Vincent Canby, appears as James Riley, one of Brolin’s “ruthless” bosses, who conceive a kidnapping scheme to start a civil war among the cartels. Screenwriter Taylor Sheridan (Wind River, Sicario) dove headfirst into dark moral dilemmas and furious political unrest with his character-driven, operatic screenplay.
Modine recently won the 2017 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble, together with his Stranger Things castmates. He is a member of the New York Film Academy’s Board of Directors and generously donates his time as master class instructor at NYFA.
“What we do is very important,” Modine has told NYFA students during his workshops. “We tell stories that change people’s lives.”
Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, who last year was featured in Antoine Fuqua’s The Magnificent Seven and Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express, portrays the amoral smuggler, Gallo — a character the actor admits was a challenge to play during this political time.
Sicario: Day of the Soldado can now be seen in theatres nationwide. The New York Film Academy congratulates Matthew Modine and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo on their powerful work.