ddcraver
While this film, with all its twists and turns, does have a number of redeeming qualities.. in the final analysis, they arent abundant enough to offset the fact that the dialog & overall structure seems slightly burdened with having to to explain how it all fits together.If, as I suspect you may be, a fan of Payback.. you probably won't regret giving this one a spin.
lphillips-50280
...that your affronted by the box office on this film...
oulamies
Let's face it, Mel Gibson is a king in playing anti-heroes. Drawing power from his past of memorable performances, most notably the Mad Max ones, Mel handles his roles with a talent of a veteran. He's roles are dark and fun, especially the role of Driver in "Get The Gringo". This movie does pretty much everything right. It has an interesting Mexican prison setting, unpredictable plot, mostly good characters, and a perfect harmony between dark humour and violent action. I'm actually gonna go ahead and call this movie smart. You'll understand by the Clint Eastwood scene.On top of prison, action and comedy elements, I get a lot of western vibes from this. There's a really cool gunfight with revolvers, and the overall dusty atmosphere creates a strict modern western feel to the movie, and this is awesome.Everything was directed well too. No clichéd scenes (okay, maybe the bonding with the boy was obvious) or the typical Hollywood morality lessons in the end. Overall a very nice, dark and fun film starring the great Mel Gibson.
Dark Jedi
I have always liked Mel Gibson and I really do not care how drunk or politically incorrect he might be. I still like to see him in movies and this is a surprisingly good movie. The movie had a proper theatrical premier in most countries except USA where it went straight to VOD which I find a bit surprising. It is a lot better movie than much of the stuff that are shown in theaters. I suspect the politically correct hypocrites had something to do with that.Personally, I found this movie surprisingly good. Mel Gibson fit the role very well and made a quite good performance. The settings with the bizarre prison which looked like a cross between Alcatraz and Freetown Christiania in Copenhagen was quite cool. It was the kind of setting that I would not have been surprised to find in a Tarantino-movie. I also liked the cynical and somewhat ironical voice-over by Gibson.The story was okay. Perhaps not the most believable one but good enough for this kind of action movie. Speaking of action, there were indeed some decent action in the movie but it is not like the movie is overloaded with it. It is nicely spread out and once the action starts it is pretty good. It is also true that some scenes are a wee bit gruesome but I am not sure that I agree with the R-rating. Most of the time that rating felt a bit over the top. Still, I rather have a R-rated movie with cuts than a PG-13 with lots of silly cuts in it.There were some silly bits of course, like how easy Mel could evade the prison and make a "business-trip" to the states when he finally felt like it and the entire business of performing transplantation surgery in a filthy prison. Mel might have found that "put it back" statement funny when he wrote it but it came out rather silly to me.Bottom line is that this was a quite enjoyable movie. A perfect after-work movie when you feel like parking your brain somewhere in the garage with your car and just sit down and watch something requiring a minimum of concentration.
AD
