[yasr_overall_rating]
“Gringo,” a dark comedy mixed with white-knuckle action and dramatic intrigue, explores the battle of survival for businessman Harold Soyinka (David Oyelowo) when he finds himself crossing the line from law-abiding citizen to wanted criminal.
David Oyelowo is not an actor that is known for his comedic abilities. To date, a lot of his starring roles have been in dramas like “Queen of Katwe,” “A United Kingdom,” “Captive,” and “Selma,” to name but a few so when I saw the trailer for “Gringo,” and realized that it was a comedy, with Oyelowo playing the titular character, I was intrigued. It wasn’t that I doubted his capability, I had just never seen him play for laughs. And that’s a good thing because he pleasantly surprised me with his performance as Harold Soyinka, a good man who has always played by the rules and then finds himself lost, in the middle of Mexico, after his boss and supposed best friend Richard Rusk (Joel Edgerton), and Rusk’s business partner Elaine Markinson (Charlize Theron), betray him and leave him for dead. The movie reminded me of Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours,” in which Griffin Dunne’s Paul Hackett, a good guy who works a regular job, has a series of misadventures on his way home from the SoHo district in New York City one night. Here, Oyelowo takes on Dunne’s character and swaps out New York with Mexico.
Harold Soyinka (Oyelowo) is the head of Sales at Cannabax Technologies, the first company to manufacture the “Weed Pill,” medical marijuana that has been streamlined into pill form. He travels regularly to Mexico to oversee the pill’s mass production but he begins to worry about his job when he hears through the grapevine that Cannabax may be subject to a corporate takeover, resulting in the loss of hundreds of jobs, including his. When his best friend and boss Richard (Edgerton) and partner Elaine (Theron) decide to accompany him on his next trip to Mexico, he is pretty much kept out of the loop of any and all conversations with their Mexican counterparts. Richard assures him that they are just talking legal matters and later that evening back at their hotel, while all three are having dinner, Harold excuses himself to the bathroom and unbeknownst to Richard and Elaine, he leaves his cell phone hidden underneath his napkin recording their every word. In his bedroom that night, he listens back to the recording and discovers that Richard and Elaine are, indeed, on the verge of selling the company and that they could care less about Harold, even going so far as to joke about having him killed. To make matters worse, when Harold’s wife Bonnie (Thandie Newton), calls him up, she informs him that she is having an affair and that she will be gone when he returns. Harold’s life comes crashing down and he quietly departs the hotel that night.
The next morning, Richard and Elaine head back to the States while Harold comes up with a story about him being kidnapped and his abductors wanting $5 million in ransom. He manages to talk two Mexican hotel workers into pretending to beat him up and when Harold calls Richard and Elaine crying and screaming, they buy every word of it, but when he tells them that they have the ingredients from their Mexican plant to make the pill, they begin to freak out. When the two hotel workers assume that Harold is actually worth a lot of money, they actually kidnap him and hold him for a real ransom. Instead of trying to raise the money though, Richard calls on his brother Mitch (Sharlto Copley), an ex-mercenary who he begs to go to Mexico to rescue Harold. Mitch initially refuses, stating that he is more spiritual now but when Richard offers him $200,000, he takes the job. Granted, once he gets there, he assumes it will be a piece of cake but when a local Cartel boss hears about Harold’s “capture,” and that he is the man with all of the resources to make the medical marijuana pill, he sends his own men out to pick him up. To make matters worse, a young couple, Sunny (Amanda Seyfried) and her English boyfriend Miles (Harry Treadaway), are holidaying in Mexico but unbeknownst to Sunny, Miles is actually there to take a sample of the weed pill and smuggle it back into the U.S. A showdown between all the characters transpires at the Cannabax plant where it’s every man, and woman, for themselves.
Everything that could go wrong does go wrong and while much of the script is conventional, watching such a first-rate cast play off each other is half the fun. David Oyelowo has demonstrated his serious acting abilities in the aforementioned movies but thankfully, he has now proven himself a fine comedic actor too. A lot of actors either do a film for the money or the critical accolades but here, the entire cast appears to be in this movie just for fun, and that’s a good thing. Director Nash Edgerton, Joel’s brother, is very aware of the clichéd and stereotypical script, along with all of its textbook scenarios and dialogue but because he has overloaded the screen with some of Hollywood’s finest, they take center stage, and everything else falls by the wayside. While the ending of the film can be seen coming a mile away, it still manages to put a big smile on your face at the eventual outcome.
In theaters Friday, March 9th
