Ok that wasn't serious, it's not actually Payback 2. But it could be. Which is totally fine with me because I loved Payback and thought Mel was fantastic in both of these pieces. Maybe the same director did both movies? Not sure, I'll have to IMBD that. Basically in both movies Mel plays a con man who's smart as hell and can unleash whoop-ass like a madman, but he's got rotten luck and ends up in shit situations. He's out for revenge and makes sure he gets what's due to him ($ for the most part). Gringo was gritty, violent, filled with f-bombs and hilarious all at the same time. So it gets an A- from this dude.
Why the minus? Because I can't tell if Mel is acting, that's why. Below are two pics of Mel, one is real life and one is in Get the Gringo. See what I'm sayin? It's like he shows up for work and the director is like, "Ok, in this scene I want you to walk over here and be yourself. Pretend you're Mel Gibson walking. And then I want you to stand over here and pretend you don't give a fuck. And then go into a rage, as if you were Mel Gibson. Action!" So despite that I love watching Mel Gibson being Mel Gibson, I can't give him mad props for awesome acting. It's like giving props to James Gandolfini for his "work" as Tony Soprano. I believe that some people are amazing actors and can morph into roles to the point where I don't even recognize them (e.g. Daniel Day Lewis, Gary Oldman, Meryl Streep, etc), and some people just show up for work. Mel's unfortunately the latter, but I still dig his stuff after all these years. There's other "show up actors" that I get bored of way faster, e.g. I hope Michael Cera's days in the spotlight are done, I don't need to see Juno part 12. And also Taylor Kisch, please make him go away.
Getting back to Gringo, Mel gets busted for a bank robbery and lands in a bizarro Mexican "prison", where basically its just a slum with walls. But inside you can do whatever you want, like have a family, get wasted, party, anything as long as you don't piss off the warden. The warden is a crook and a whacky plot unfolds involving Mel's new best buddy (an 11 year old), but Mel comes to the rescue and kills everyone and saves the day. There's some really good action scenes and shootouts, and some surprising cameos (Peter Stormare and also that guy who was the warden in Shawshank Redemption, I forget his name).
Bottomline is that I enjoyed these 2 hours, and could watch this movie again and it'd be worth buying on bluray.
