Review: Gringo

“Not quite dark enough, not quite funny enough. A muddy movie that left me reminiscing of the greatness of The Death of Stalin.”

Dark comedies require very careful direction and strong writing. Blazing Saddles writer Norman Steinberg once said “The protagonist always has to go through some kind of change. Unless you’re writing a dark comedy and those are nearly impossible to get right.”

Subtlety is needed, something modern comedies don’t often possess. Above all, I think, dark comedies require a good dose of old fashioned wit. The balance has to be just right. You characters almost have to be both horrible yet enjoyable. If not, you start looking at your watch and wondering how long the film has been going. For film that was less than 2 hours, this felt quite long. It’s not a terrible film, but the cinema was pretty quiet throughout, and not in a good way.

The film follows Harold, played well by David Oyelowo, is a likeable nice guy who gets pushed around a lot. Harold unfortunately doesn’t realise that his whole life is surrounded by arseholes. He believes his boss Richard (Joel Edgerton) is his friend. But Harrold has a lot of stress, with pressure from his greedy wife as debts build up, and concern over his job after a friend tells him about a rumour the company he works for is going to merge. His boss Richard, it turns out, is a colossal prick and by the time Harold realises, during a business trip to Mexico, his life has fallen apart. So, with no reason to go home, Harold decides to take matters into his own hands and get some revenge.

You can't fire me, my brother is the director.

Up to this point, the film has bounced between several sets of characters and plots. The film however, adds characters that don’t really matter, such as the young American couple who are travelling to Mexico to sneak a drug back to America. When we finally arrive at the point of Harold taking matters into his own hands, this where the film should have been fun. More characters enter but despite a number of tasty ingredients, the meal that comes out of the kitchen lacks any real flavour to be excited about, let alone making you want to order it again.

Charlize Theron is probably the highlight of the film. She has a ball playing the slightly crazy and slutty partner to Edgerton’s sleaze. She will use all means at her disposal to get what she wants and will certainly say whatever she wants as well.

Edgerton is adequate as Richard, but his character isn’t dislikeable in the way that you love to hate him. The film should make you want to see him go down, just as much as you want to see Harold win, but in the end you just want to see Harold come out alright and don’t really care about Richard.

Amanda Seyfried and Sharlto Copley pop up, and Copley is fun as usual, but Seyfried doesn’t really have much to do.

There are multiple stories at work here, but none of them are particularly interesting and you just kind of wait until it starts to tie together (which isn't as interesting as you'd expect it to be). There were characters we needed more investment in, such as Harold’s wife Bonnie. However, all we really get from her is that she spends a lot of money and used to be a ‘fatty’. This ‘joke’ alone sums up where this film lets itself down, as the writing just wasn’t on point. The film also over plays its hand a lot, as a number of jokes feel very forced, coupled with some very obvious plot reveals that you see coming with little thought.

Despite my thoughts here, I didn’t hate the film. It’s more that I wanted to really like it, as these types of films are a favourite of mine. But where films such as Payback, or this years entries of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri and The Death of Stalin are easily rewatchable, this one is not one I expect to revisit in the future.

The five bearded questions:

1. Was it worth a cinema trip? Not quite. Watching it on Netflix would have been better.

2. Would I See It Again at the Cinema? No.

3. Would I buy it on Blu-ray: (only films I really love get bought these days) No 4. Do I Recommend people see it? Probably not.

5. Any cheese/ Disney style bullshit?: (such as jokes wedged in at serious moments, because fun!). No, but there were some really weak jokes.