By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Nash Edgerton
Cast: David Oyelowo, Joel Edgerton, Charlize Theron, Amanda Seyfried, Thandie Newton, Sharlto Copley, Paris Jackson, Yul Vazquez, Harry Treadaway, Kenneth Choi, Melonie Diaz, Diego Cataño, Bashir Salahuddin and Alan Ruck.
Rating: Poor.
Nash Edgerton, director of “The Square” brings “Gringo” a comedy and action film that unfortunately didn´t deliver.
The movie centers in Harold Soyinka (David Oyelowo) a businessman from Chicago that works for Cannabax Technologies who just recently created the “Weed Pill”.
One day he goes in a business trip to Mexico with his bosses Richard Rusk (Joel Edgerton) and Elaine Markinson (Charlize Theron). In that trip he will be kidnapped and realize that Cannabak Technologies was doing business with a mexican cartel. Now Harold will try to figure out a way to survive this ordeal before he is history.
“Gringo” is a comedy that had a good start but it went downhill afterwards. The reason why I´m saying this is because the screenplay written by Anthony Tambakis and Matthew Stone was very sloppy and by moments very confusing.
I am really surprised of this since both of them are very experienced writers; Tambakis did one of my favorite films from 2011 “Warrior” which it´s a fantastic film and Stone has a lot of experience in this genre. The characters of this film aren´t that rich and there was a moment that I didn´t feel for any of them.
The plot was useless and I believe that it had a lot of good potential since the concept was interesting.
Nash Edgerton´s directing was all over the place. His camera work was sloppy and the performances by his cast were not convincing. He had huge talent of his disposal but didn´t deliver.
David Oyelowo had very fun moments and I believe he is a very talented actor. The same goes to Joel Edgerton and Charlize Theron who are as talented as Oyelowo but their effort was not enough.
An actor is always going to do their best in terms of deliving a good performance but unfortunately they cannot do to much when a weak script is involved.
There was a moment in the film that I wanted it to be over since it was going nowhere. I think the movie started backwards, instead of going straight to the facts. Another factor is that they showed to much backstory in the characters and less is better.
I agree that it´s important to show something but if you show too much it´s not going to be interesting to watch and this is what happened with “Gringo”.
Nash Edgerton I think is a filmmaker that can deliver the goods. He made “Spider”, a short film of 2007 that was very good and knew how to manage the time in pacing. I would like to see him directing another film at some point since he can deliver and I hope this is a learning lesson for him.
“Gringo” is one of the most disappointing comedies of 2018. I cannot recommend it for the performances, sloppy screenplay and bad directing.