A foul-tasting chimichanga of great actors and pitiful ideas that only a foreigner could cook up, when considering “Gringo,” the woefully misguided and vulgar dark comedy by STX Entertainment and Amazon Studios, one must weigh the lesser of its many evils. What’s least offensive? Its repugnantly blithe approach to racism (set in Mexico and yet carelessly treating all its native characters like trash and throwaway stereotypes), its casually gratuitous violence, its loathsome characters, its zany twists, its needlessly hyper-convoluted plot, its many tedious clichés or its overall nasty, yet self-satisfied tone?
Aiming for a mix of Elmore Leonard, Tarantino and Coen Brothers satire and wholly missing the mark, director Nash Edgerton’s “Gringo” attempts to lampoon the idea of the American Dream while playing with the formula of the innocent rube who ends up turning the tables on the wicked. “Gringo” hopes to crackle with a crime caper snap a la “Out Of Sight” or “Jackie Brown,” but winds up more like one of those ‘90s also-rans like “Be Cool” or worse, “Big Trouble.”
Playing against type, David Oyelowo stars as Harold Soyinka, a gracious, but hapless cuck, Nigerian immigrant and mid-level exec at a pharmaceutical company in Chicago. Trusting, naïve, obedient and going broke thanks to his spendthrift wife, Harold’s life is shit, but he’s too guileless to accept it and too polite to challenge it. Harold believes in success through hard work, pride in a job well done and sacrificing for those around him which makes him the perfect patsy for his bosses, the detestable Richard Rusk (Joel Edgerton) and the venom-tipped Elaine Markinson (Charlize Theron), cartoonishly cruel, backstabbing opportunists and first class corporate douchebags. Harold is a kind man in a world of unkind people, which is perfect considering how awful and insulting “Gringo” is to him, most of its characters and its audience.
While his bosses connive and plot against him, Harold is sent to Mexico to deliver the company’s experimental marijuana pill to their sister company South of the border. But when a drug cartel is crossed in the mix, Harold is kidnapped and only a hired mercenary (Sharlto Copley), struggling to stay on a new spiritual path of righteousness, can save him.
But that’s really the shortest possible version of what is an incredibly messy and overstuffed narrative that also includes a useless and unnecessary subplot about a young couple (Amanda Seyfried and Harry Treadaway) also synchronously traveling to Mexico for a minor drug smuggle of their own (though she doesn’t know it).
As the “Gringo” plot thickens, or curdles, really, the brimming thicket of narrative double crosses on top of double crosses become that much more contrived and convoluted. But the central notion of Darwinism, one of its loose themes, remains: is Harold Soyinka simply a good egg in a land of vicious reptiles? Do nice guys always finish last? And can Harold, born more loser than winner, possibly triumph in the end?
The of law of moviegoing averages presumes you know how this one goes so the only thing that “Gringo” keeps you guessing with is just how far the insipid movie will go to further manufacture ridiculous twists and rile you with further toxic, sexist, racist, provocative, un-PC jabs that aren’t ultimately very funny.
For all its debts to far greater ‘90s crime capers, “Gringo” plays comparatively closer to schticky broad comedy. Edgerton’s sole direction to every actor seems to encourage a gonzo-y, grotesque caricature—usually of someone outlandishly vile—and his greatest feat throughout seems to be somehow convincing this overqualified cast to appear in this dreck. Oyelowo fares a little bit better than everyone else, but even he’s forced to endure some scenes that border on minstrelsy. There are admittedly flashes of brilliance from Theron, but her poisonous character never fully makes that switch to deliciously malicious and all you’re left with is bile.
Written by screenwriters Anthony Tambakis and Matthew Stone (the latter of which is the scripter behind the aforementioned Barry Sonnenfeld dud “Big Trouble”), the movie’s idea of giving a drug cartel lord some character color is painting him as a music-loving sociopath. He wants to know if you think Sgt. Pepper’s is The Beatles’ best record and god forbid you give this gun-toting madman the wrong answer (spoiler: it’s Let It Be). Followed by a gruesomely chilling, tonally jarring moment of violence, this is what apparently attempts to passes for irony in a 1990s version of 2018.
Featuring a fittingly shallow funk-lite score by Christophe Beck, “Gringo,” is ultimately like a Taco Bell version of the ‘90s crime genre; tasteless, cheaply made and just as inauthentic. [D]