Get the Gringo (2012)

I think this is the first movie I've seen with Mel Gibson in an acting role to have come out after 2000. Certainly the first after his two notorious scandals of the 2000s. I'm not sure what prompted me to save it to my YouTube watch list, but I know the main reason I chose it: a short runtime.

A robber (Gibson) tries to escape the police by crossing the border, only to get caught by corrupt Mexican cops. Keeping his loot for themselves, they send him to an unorthodox prison that's basically a walled-off, crime-ridden village, complete with families and a rich-poor gap. Not an easy place for an American to survive, but as a former U.S. Army sniper, he has skills to draw the attention of the de facto leaders....

I didn't identify the protagonist by name because he uses many aliases. He's clearly a career criminal, having rendered his fingers printless. He continues to steal within "El Pueblito." But lest you think he cares only about himself, he wants to protect a similarly unnamed kid (Kevin Balmore Hernandez) with personal enmity toward thug Javi (Daniel Giménez Cacho), along with the kid's unnamed mother (Dolores Heredia).

I was prepared to add a "politically incorrect" tag because of all the Mexican crooks, but the few Anglos we see are crooked in their own right. The antihero -- fine, "the Gringo" -- doesn't express any bigotry either. He even starts a serious relationship with the mother. I suspect that sex scenes were omitted from the bowdlerized video, accounting for many minutes' difference.

On that note, all the top YouTube comments were ridiculing the censorship, and I don't blame them. English swears are silenced in speech (all the more jarring after my last viewing) and blurred in subtitles, but Spanish swears are fully audible. Some of the blur rectangles overstay and partly obscure clean words. We see some bloodshed and gunfire, yet lit cigarettes look fuzzy. If you're not game for these R-rated aspects, you probably won't be satisfied with this edition.

The movie, alternately and misleadingly titled How I Spent My Summer Vacation, is partly identified as a dark comedy. I wouldn't have guessed if not for a few times the scene pauses for sardonic first-person narration. I'm unsold on the thriller label as well. Mostly, it's a gritty drama with OK action moments.

At its best, GtG evokes the '70s. It does not rekindle my appetite for Gibson on screen. I can see why it's fairly popular with critics but about average to mainstream audiences.