Get the Gringo (2012)

... or how it's written on the poster "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" as an alternate title, is the last production starring Mel Gibson in a lead role. Some time ago I was thinking that this guy, considering the bunch of problems he managed to get into, pretty much finished his career. I'm not totally sure that I wasn't right, but what can I say is that the situation seems to play well for the quality of his last movies. Unfortunately not financially speaking I'm afraid. I think that the release for the current one was delayed with something close to one year and it's also limited if I'm right = in some places didn't manage to get into cinemas and went straight to pay-per-view. But, getting back to the actual movie ...

In brief, we have something that seems to be like a sort of "Payback 2" with a scent of "Lucky Number Slevin" and mixed with some others of the genre that I can't remember now - but more gruesome and more crazy. To summarize it, the guy on the poster is a thief who manages to steal quite an amount of cash from .. let's say "somebody" so I won't spoil anything .. from San Diego, California. For the general knowledge, in case it wasn't known already, San Diego is quite close to Mexico. Where the unlucky fellow, without having too many options, and chased by the local corrupt police, decides to plunge through the frontier border. After this, he's picked up by the neighbor local police, relieved of his stolen money and thrown without many questions in a sort of ad-hoc prison. To define ad-hoc prison: a surrounded guarded perimeter, without cells but with a local economy = from sleeping places rented by the perimeter mafia up to kiosks with cigarettes and cola, and others. In this context every resident has to earn his daily living somehow. What happens further ... well .. we have action, romance, some twists .. everything wrapped up by a story that's more original than lots of productions with a quintuple budget.

I won't say more of the story. In the end, the movie is quite far fetched, but it somehow manages not to surpass the limit = in the sense that pretty much every scene like: "come on (eyeroll), why ?" (= why the heck did it happened what I just saw in the previous second) can have a quick explanation. So there is a minimum degree of credibility in there. What I found a bit bothering, and I can't explain myself why, because I consider myself as having a pretty high level of tolerance, is the fact that is rated R and the scenes in this rating are plenty. Probably I just wasn't in the mood for something in this range, but getting over it the movie really deserves watching. Gibson makes a very good role, and it makes me feel sorry again that he's not really loved by the producers after the scandals he got into (apparently the Hollywood has a very big problem with dissociating between a guy's private life and what he does on screen). To get to a conclusion, the movie could have been better, but for one hour and thirty, although I start to repeat myself, the subject is sufficiently dense not to give you time to check your watch. Even if maybe the trailer doesn't suggest that ( but only the funny part ;) ).

Rating: 4 out of 5 ( a bit at the limit though .. :) )