Gringo (2018)

the audience applauded

Absolutely brilliant

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

I was able to watch this movie at home on BluRay from my public library. The story mainly concerns a character played by David Oyelowo. He is Harold, a dedicated, serious, hard-working employee of a firm located in Chicago. His "best friend" runs the company, but as things unfold we see that his friend is duplicitous and will do anything for the bottom line.Harold goes to Mexico but finds out his company sale is imminent and he will be out of a job. Industriously he plots to fake his own kidnapping in an attempt to get a big severance for himself. $5Million sounds pretty good, doesn't it?Yet nothing goes as it should, the mess gets bigger and bigger. It is a dark comedy, lots of funny stuff but characters get shot and killed. While I enjoyed it as an interesting diversion, with very good actors, in total it isn't a particularly good movie.

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. Despite a terrific cast this dark comedy is toned down by it's own stupidity and horribly written characters that even actors like Charlize Theron can't fix. The story was also boring and the pacing was off, a total waste of good money and names. (0/10)

Movies like this are supposed to be focused on the circumstances, a one-off, nothing deep, and this was well achieved with Gringo. I laughed at some appropriate moments, nothing felt unbelievable, and the lead was likeable. Basic stuff, but basic stuff not done poorly.Worth the time.

I was having a chat with a friend earlier about how many of the Hollywood movies seem to be reboots, remakes, and sequels, though one of the main reasons for this is that movies tend to be high risk endeavours costing at times hundreds of millions of dollars that actually trying something new is simply not worth it. I guess this is why some of the really original films actually end up being at the low end of the market, and it appears that this film certainly falls into that category. While the film itself isn't strictly original, there are elements of it that certainly set it apart from a lot of the other films that we see around the place. Basically it is about this middle manager who got his job simply because he was friends with one of the bosses. However, he is a nice guy, and the reality of the business world is that nice guys end up getting shafted. Well, he ends up in Mexico sorting out some business with a plant down there, and upon discovering what is really going on decides that he might try extorting some money out of the company, and the fact that his wife had just left him, there really isn't all that much left for him back in the states. This is one of those films that introduces us to multiple disparate characters who all eventually come together - well not quite, but there is a connection there. One of them is a guy that has been persuaded to go to Mexico and bring back some pills for analysis. However, there is also a Mexican drug lord that has been profiting off of the company's underhanded dealings, and when he discovers that he has also been cut off, decides that he wants to take what he believes to be rightfully his. I guess in the end it is the characters that really make this film, and that can actually work well - create the characters and build the film around them. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but then again if you have a well rounded character that will react in certain ways in certain situations then you are on the way to actually creating a half decent story. Okay, I won't necessarily say that this is one of the best films out there, but it certainly has its perks, and the characters really did stand out at times - particularly the protagonist Harold. Having a Nigerian accent also added to that authenticity. There is one thing about this film that stands out, and that is loyalty, or rather the lack of it. I noticed that out of all the characters in the film there were only two that could be considered honest and loyal - pretty much everybody else was completely untrustworthy. The question that is raised though really comes down to whether it is worth it. Well, it was a bit of a hit or miss in this film - not all of the dishonourable people got it, and not all of the decent people got away clean. Sure, a number of the nasty characters did get it in the neck, but a few of them managed to get away. I guess this is another other of this nice things about the film because while a number of these characters ended up meeting a rather sorry end, not all of them did.