Three stars. Rated R, for profanity, violence and sexual content
By Derrick Bang
If the rest of this film were as
accomplished as David Oyelowo’s starring performance, it would be far more
entertaining.
Who knew Oyelowo could be so
adorable and laugh-out-loud hilarious? It’s quite a surprise from the actor who
brought such dignity to memorable roles in A United Kingdom, Queen of Katwe
and Selma (the latter playing no less
than Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.).
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| Harold (David Oyelowo, left) grows increasingly suspicious when his bosses — Richard (Joel Edgerton) and Elaine (Charlize Theron) — insist on joining him for what should be a routine visit to their pharmaceutical company's Mexican manufacturing plant. |
Clearly, true acting talent knows
no genre boundaries.
Alas, Oyelowo is by far the best part
of Gringo, which otherwise is a mess.
Scripters Matthew Stone and Anthony Tambakis appear to be going for the uneasy
blend of crime thriller and dark-dark-dark
comedy that was pulled off so brilliantly by 1993’s True Romance, but that’s a hard act to duplicate. That film was
scripted by Quentin Tarantino, and — frankly — Stone and Tambakis aren’t fit to
clean the keys of his laptop.
The elements are in place here;
Stone and Tambakis simply don’t know how to blend the ingredients into a
suitably tasty final product. They badly misjudge some character development,
overlook some obvious plot twists, and build to a resolution with at least one
(perhaps two) deeply unsatisfying outcomes.
Nash Edgerton’s direction doesn’t
help; his handling of the film’s tone is all over the map, and he lets co-star
Charlize Theron get away with a truly dreadful performance (something I wasn’t
aware she was capable of). Edgerton is a former stunt man and director of video
shorts with only one prior big-screen feature to his credit — 2008’s so-so The Square — and I can’t help wondering
if his presence here has less to do with having paid sufficient dues, and more
to do with his relationship to better-known younger brother Joel Edgerton, who
also co-stars in this uneven thriller.
In Hollywood, it truly does pay
to have friends in high places.
The story is complicated, so get
out your notebooks:
Harold Soyinka, an intelligent
but naïvely loyal manager at the pharmaceuticals firm Promethium, is blindly
unaware that his boss and (supposed) best friend, Richard Rusk (Edgerton), is a
rapacious corporate shark who is cheerfully willing to screw anybody in service
of further fattening his bank account. Indeed, Richard is screwing company co-owner Elaine Markinson (Theron), a
jaw-droppingly crass, vulgar and profane bitch who casually employs sex as a
weapon.
Theron’s initial scenes are a
perfect example of Nash Edgerton’s poor direction. Her crude, bad-mannered
put-downs and liberal F-bombs look and sound contrived, as if Theron isn’t
comfortable delivering them, or doesn’t believe in her character ... or something. Whatever the reason, her
performance is off-kilter, and remains so; the film never recovers from Elaine’s
behavior.
Richard also is sleeping with
Harold’s wife, Bonnie (a miscast and badly used Thandie Newton), because ...
well, just because. Neither Bonnie nor this sidebar affair is well developed.
