Remember Mel Gibson? Well he remembers and misses you. Not all of you of course, and by ‘you’ I mean exactly who you think I mean. But he misses most of you. The past few years haven’t been all that kind to the guy, both personally and professionally, but to be fair it’s mostly his own fault. Still, I couldn’t care less about his offscreen antics and behavior. I only care about the movies.
And the guy has made some great ones.
He’s found massive success as a director, but his last box office hit as an actor was Signs from a decade ago. His recent one-two punch of Edge of Darkness and The Beaver failed to generate much interest, but neither of them were really in his preferred wheelhouse of blackly comic action. The best example of his from that mini genre remains Brian Helgeland’s fantastic Payback. (His director’s cut is also quite good although it drops much of the comedy.)
Gibson’s latest is Get the Gringo (aka How I Spent My Summer Vacation), an action comedy about a criminal who heads to Mexico with a car full of cash and a dying accomplice only to get arrested by local authorities and tossed into a tough prison. Don’t worry though, he gets out.
Check out the new trailer for Get the Gringo below.
Is it me or does this thing have a really strong Payback vibe? I’m not complaining, and I’m happy to think of it as a sequel in spirit to that 1999 film. It looks to have the same mix of action, torture and dryly comic dialogue too, and while it’s unclear if the narration in the trailer is actually in the finished film that also matches the earlier film’s tone and style. The only unfortunate thing about it is the film is set to bypass theaters in favor of a video on demand premier. It’s an interesting move for a major star (at one time at least) that finds the middle ground between theatrical and straight to DVD releases.
Get the Gringo hits VOD on May 1st, followed by a DVD/blu-ray rollout before the end of the year.
