Get The Gringo

Mel Gibson has been spending so much time on TMZ these days, I wouldn’t be surprised if you thought TMZ stood for The Mel Zone, but he hasn’t stopped making movies. If you have DirectTV, you have a chance to check out his latest, Get The Gringo. If you want to is another story.

Gibson plays an unnamed bandit trying to make a getaway with plenty of cash, when he crosses the border from California into Mexico. The Mexican cops capture him, take his money, and chuck the guy into a strange prison that is part shanty town village, and run by a mysterious crime lord, Javi (Daniel Gimenez Cacho). Of course, he draws lots of attention from all of those around him, but he finds himself in more trouble than he can handle when he befriends a young boy (Kevin Hernandez) who knows who is who, what is what and is protected for reasons unknown.

Will the gringo find a way to break out of this place?

Where did that money come from?

Why is the kid so important?

At this point, you have made up your mind about Gibson, his character and his personal issues, so no need to further talk ad naseum about all of that (if you hate him, I suspect you aren't reading this review). However, Get The Gringo isn't exactly the movie that will make you forget all of his personal travails.

Trying to capture the spirit and sense of other edgy caper movies like Out of Sight or Drive or almost anything from Guy Ritchie or Elmore Leonard, Gibson, who co-wrote the script with director Adrian Grunberg and Stacy Perskie, attempts to insert irony, sass and laughs into the movie to make it into more of a dark comedy than a crime drama. However, the tone of Get The Gringo switches back and forth between dark comedy and drama much too often and without any sense of subtlety. Gibson and Grunberg have failed to pick a direction and stick with it, which leads to the movie sometimes bordering on ridiculous, and at other times, crossing that border like Napoleon invading Russia.

Sure, some of the quirkiness will make you laugh, but the movie often falls into self-parody, while the stuff with the kid drags the film down. It's supposed to be some sort of moment of redemption for Gibson's character, but we don't need redemption in a movie like Get The Gringo. We need dirty, gritty characters and underworld situations that no honest man should ever face.

Get The Gringo is rated R for strong bloody violence, pervasive language, some drug use and sexual material.